I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving into Kirchheim in Hesse last autumn, though I will admit it took me to the wrong village first. There I was, pulling up outside a tidy little house with a very confused elderly gentleman watering his geraniums, waving at me like I was a long lost nephew. I waved back, realised my error, and reversed into a wheelie bin. The bin survived. My dignity did not.

The proper property, when I finally found it, was a traditional Hessian half-timbered affair with beams that looked older than my entire family tree. The key was in a lockbox that required the dexterity of a safecracker and the patience of a fisherman, but once inside I was greeted by that particular smell of old wood, clean linen, and someone else's slightly too efficient vacuuming. The kitchen, though, that was where my heart settled. A proper cooker, a fridge that actually hummed rather than rattled, and a window overlooking a garden where someone had planted enough herbs to stock a small restaurant.

I had grand plans, as one always does on self-catering holidays. I would cook magnificent meals. I would embrace local produce. I would not, under any circumstances, survive on supermarket sandwiches and regret. The nearest proper shop was in Kirchheim itself, a bakery and a small supermarket that stocked things I could mostly identify. I bought eggs that were still speckled, butter in a paper wrapper, and some rather intimidating sausages that I later learned were Ahle Wurst, a local air-dried variety that looks like it could double as a defensive weapon.

My first evening I attempted something ambitious with these sausages, potatoes, and a jar of mustard that turned out to be horseradish. The resulting dish was edible in the way that a lukewarm bath is refreshing. I ate it standing at the kitchen counter, staring out at the dark garden, wondering if the neighbours could smell my failure through their presumably much thicker walls. The local pub, I decided, would be my salvation.

The Gasthaus in the village centre was one of those places where the regulars have their own chairs and the landlord knows everyone's business back three generations. I pushed through the door with the confidence of a man who had already ruined his own dinner, and ordered a pint of local beer and whatever was coming out of the kitchen. The Schnitzel arrived bigger than my plate, with potatoes fried in enough butter to make a cardiologist weep. I ate every crumb and considered licking the plate before remembering I was in polite company.

The next morning I found the weekly market, or rather it found me as I followed my nose to a car park filled with stalls. I bought apples that tasted like actual apples, some rather smelly cheese from a woman who spoke no English but communicated perfectly through aggressive free samples, and bread so dense it could have served as ballast. I spent twenty minutes discussing with a sausage vendor the relative merits of his various products, understanding perhaps one word in ten but nodding with what I hoped looked like expertise.

Back at the cottage I attempted a proper German breakfast, laying out my market treasures with the precision of a museum curator. The bread defeated my bread knife. The cheese made the fridge smell permanently of feet. The apples, though, were perfect, and I ate two standing in the garden in my socks, feeling briefly like a man who had his life in order.

Cooking became my daily comedy. I tried to make Handkase mit Musik, a local cheese dish, and produced something that looked like medical waste. I attempted potato soup that scorched to the bottom of the pan because I became distracted by a particularly aggressive pigeon in the garden. Each evening I retreated to the pub, where the landlord began greeting me with a resigned nod and a menu he no longer bothered to present.

By the end of the week I had eaten more meat than I thought humanly possible, drunk enough local beer to consider importing it, and developed a genuine affection for the particular rhythm of village life. My last morning I made a final market trip, bought too much of everything, and packed my car with a bag of apples and a vague plan to make a proper pie when I got home. I have not yet made that pie. The apples went soft in the fruit bowl and I threw them out with the same guilt I feel about most of my abandoned projects.

Driving away, the sat nav directed me correctly this time, which felt almost like an insult. I passed the house with the geraniums, the old man nowhere in sight, and I tooted my horn in a gesture of solidarity with anyone who has ever arrived somewhere entirely by mistake. The wheelie bin, I noted, had been moved.