I have never been so grateful to see a petrol station sandwich in my entire life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling up the B242 towards Lautenthal in the Harz, having left Berlin with the smug confidence of people who had definitely packed snacks. We had not packed snacks. What we had packed was one bag of slightly stale crisps and a level of optimism that the Harz would immediately present us with a charming roadside bakery. Reader, it did not.

The mishap, if you can call a spectacular failure of basic planning a mishap, struck somewhere past Goslar. My stomach made a noise that I can only describe as a disappointed tuba solo. We pulled into a Shell garage near Clausthal-Zellerfeld and I ate a ham and cheese roll that tasted of refrigeration and regret. My partner had a chocolate muffin that she later described as "educational." We sat in the car, crumbs everywhere, and laughed until I hiccupped. This was meant to be our romantic getaway. So far, so catastrophic.

Then we rounded the bend into Lautenthal, and something peculiar happened. The village sat there in the valley like it had been waiting for us to stop being idiots. Half-timbered houses, a proper church tower, the whole fairy-tale arrangement. Our holiday home turned out to be one of those traditional Harz buildings with dark wooden beams and a balcony that looked out towards the forest. I immediately forgot about the petrol station trauma. Almost.

The owners had left us a welcome basket. Proper bread, actual butter, local honey that tasted like someone had distilled a meadow. There was even a bottle of Schierker Feuerstein, that herb liqueur the Harz is famous for. We opened it that evening because we are not people who learn from mistakes. It tastes like medicine and Christmas had a baby, and I mean that in the best possible way. Two small glasses and we were discussing whether we could realistically live here forever, perhaps raising goats.

The next morning, properly hungry and properly determined, we walked to the village bakery. Five minutes, maybe less. The woman behind the counter spoke no English and my German extends to ordering beer and apologising. Somehow, through pointing and enthusiastic nodding, I acquired a loaf of rye bread, some proper Harzer cheese, and what I later learned was Mettwurst. The cheese, I must be honest, smelled like feet. Delicious, complex, historically significant feet. We ate it on our balcony with tomatoes from the tiny village market that sets up near the river on Thursdays. The tomatoes tasted of actual sunshine, which I had previously believed to be marketing nonsense.

Lautenthal itself has a couple of proper pubs, nothing fancy, exactly what you want. We found one called Zum Roten Hirsch, or something similarly traditional, where the landlord pulled our beers with the gravity of a man conducting important research. The menu was handwritten, mostly meat and potatoes in various excellent configurations. I had a Schnitzel the size of a dinner plate with fried potatoes and a fried egg on top, because apparently in the Harz they believe in gilding the lily, then frying the lily, then serving it with more lily. My partner had Harzer Eintopf, a stew thick enough to stand a spoon in. We sat there for hours, watching locals play cards, drinking more beer than was strictly necessary, and plotting our return.

I attempted to cook on our third evening. The kitchen in the holiday home was perfectly adequate, which is more than can be said for my skills. I bought trout from a farm shop just outside the village, reasoning that fresh fish basically cooks itself. This is not true. Fresh fish does not cook itself. Fresh fish, in the hands of an amateur, becomes a disappointing metaphor for hubris. I overcooked it, underseasoned it, and served it with potatoes that were raw in the middle because I got impatient and sliced them too thick. My partner, who is kinder than I deserve, said it was "rustic." We finished the Schierker Feuerstein and ordered pizza from a place in nearby Wildemann the next night. Some wisdom comes slowly.

The market in Lautenthal became our Thursday ritual. Not large, not flashy, but proper. Vegetables with soil still on them. Sausages made by someone you could point at. Honey from bees that definitely lived in the immediate vicinity. I bought a jar of pickled gherkins that I carried home in my coat pocket like a small green treasure. We started planning meals days in advance, a level of domestic organisation that would have horrified our younger selves. There is something about the Harz that makes you care about lunch in a way that city life never does.

Our final evening, we returned to the pub. Same table, same landlord, same unhurried pace. I had the Eintopf this time, having learned my lesson about cooking fish. My partner had pork knuckle, which arrived with crackling like a geological formation. We talked about the petrol station sandwich, how far we had come, how completely we had failed to bring snacks and how completely the Harz had fed us anyway. Outside, the village was quiet, the forest dark against the sky. I raised my glass to poor planning, to bread that smells like feet, to meals cooked by people who know what they are doing, and to one spectacularly bad trout that taught me my place.