I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when our sat nav decided that "St. Peter am Kammersberg" was actually a field full of very unimpressed cows. There we were, two hours from Graz, my partner driving with that tight jaw she gets when she is pretending not to be annoyed, and me frantically rotating a paper map like I was trying to crack a safe. The children had already reached that stage of the journey where they ask "are we there yet" with genuine scientific curiosity, testing whether the answer changes if they ask louder.

We found the cottage eventually, tucked up a lane that felt like driving through someone's private daydream. The NOVASOL property sat there looking impossibly proper, all traditional Styrian wood and flower boxes, while we pulled up looking like we had just survived a minor expedition. I had packed the car with what I now realise was enough luggage for a month, including three types of raincoat per person because I had read somewhere that Styria has "changeable" weather, which turned out to mean "mostly lovely with occasional dramatic clouds for atmosphere."

The key was in the lockbox, which I opened with the code while doing a little celebratory dance that my daughter found "embarrassing but also funny, which is worse." The door swung open and there it was: that particular smell of proper Austrian wood panelling, somewhere between a sauna and a very well-kept forest. The children bolted past me to claim bedrooms, which resulted in a negotiation so tense I briefly considered calling in international mediators.

I will be honest about my first impression of the kitchen. I walked in thinking "we will probably eat out mostly," then opened the fridge and saw it was the size of a small aircraft hangar. My partner raised an eyebrow. That eyebrow said everything. We were going to cook. We were going to attempt to be that family who buys local pumpkin seed oil and makes proper evening meals instead of surviving on bread and cheese like we do at home. The pumpkin seed oil, by the way, is everywhere in Styria. I had not understood this. It is in shops, in restaurants, probably in the tap water. I bought a bottle the size of my forearm by day three and have no regrets.

The first evening, we sat on the terrace with that particular golden light you get in the Mur Valley, watching the hills do their slow green ripple into the distance. My son asked if we could see Slovenia from here. I said probably not, then immediately worried I was wrong and someone would correct me. That is the thing about this area, you are so close to borders and edges and little pockets of elsewhere. It makes you slightly giddy, geographically speaking.

I attempted to light the barbecue that first night. This went about as well as my map-reading, which is to say there was smoke, there was confusion, and eventually there was a sausage that tasted faintly of triumph and lighter fluid. We ate outside until the children started doing that slow blink that means they are actually asleep with their eyes open, then carried them in like sacks of very warm potatoes.

Lying in bed that night, listening to the absolute silence that only seems to exist in proper countryside, I had one of those moments. You know the ones. Where you realise you have been holding your breath for months without knowing it. The cottage creaked a bit, settling around us like a friendly dog. Somewhere, a cowbell did its slow clonk. I thought about the sat nav failure, the overpacking, the barbecue drama, and smiled in the dark. This was already exactly what we needed, and we had only just arrived.