I had convinced myself that driving through the Vosges mountains would be the romantic part of the holiday, the bit where I would feel all continental and capable. Instead, I spent forty minutes circling Mittelbergheim's medieval one-way system, growing increasingly certain that my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me. The village, perched on its hillside like something from a storybook, clearly was not designed for a British estate car with an overpacked boot and a driver who kept confusing left and right.

The mishap, when it came, was almost impressively mundane. I finally spotted what I hoped was our holiday cottage, wrestled the car into a space barely wider than a bicycle, and promptly dropped the entire set of door keys down a drainage grate. There they sat, glinting mockingly in the Alsace sunshine, while I stood in the quiet street wondering whether this qualified as an emergency worthy of bothering the local gendarmerie. A passing elderly gentleman, clearly accustomed to hapless tourists, produced a magnet on a string from his pocket with the practised air of someone who had performed this rescue many times before. He said something in rapid French that I chose to interpret as warm reassurance rather than gentle mockery, though his expression suggested a healthy measure of both.

The cottage itself, when I finally unlocked it, smelled of old timber and something faintly herbal that I later identified as the dried lavender hanging in the kitchen. My first proper look around revealed beams so low that I immediately cracked my head, an event that sent me sitting on the flagged floor for a moment of what I can only describe as profound reconsideration of my life choices. The sitting room was dominated by a wood-burning stove that looked as though it had been installed sometime before the Franco-Prussian War, and a staircase so steep and narrow that I understood immediately why the property description had used the word "character" so liberally.

I had packed for some imagined version of rural France where I would be preparing elaborate meals from local market produce. The reality of the kitchen hit me slowly: a proper range that required actual fire-lighting, copper pans hung on walls far too high for me to reach without the wobbly step stool I found wedged behind the door, and a fridge that hummed with the determined irregularity of a small aircraft preparing for takeoff. I made tea using the single electric kettle I could locate, sitting at the wooden table and watching dust motes move through the afternoon light while my head throbbed gently.

The village outside began to assert itself as I recovered. Church bells marked the hour with unhurried precision. Somewhere, a dog barked once and thought better of continuing. I could see vineyards falling away from the window, rows of vines in their late summer green stretching toward the plain below, and beyond them the faint blue suggestion of more hills. The half-timbered houses of Mittelbergheim clustered together as if for company against the vastness of all that wine-growing countryside.

My luggage remained largely unpacked. The wood for the stove sat in a basket, untouched. I had achieved nothing beyond arriving, losing keys, injuring myself, and making a single cup of tea. Yet sitting there, with my throbbing head and my complete failure to be the capable traveller I had imagined, I felt something unfamiliar settle over me. The cottage did not care about my incompetence. The village had witnessed worse. The vines would continue their slow progression toward harvest regardless of whether I managed to work the range or not.

I finished my tea and went to find the village bakery before it closed, walking slowly through streets that had seen centuries of arrivals far more significant than mine.