I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through a field of very unimpressed-looking sheep. There I was, bombing down the A20 towards Usedom, full of that peculiar optimism that comes from a service station coffee and a packet of Mini Cheddars, when the robotic voice announced I had reached my destination. I had not. I had reached a tractor. A very large, very stationary tractor, behind which sat a man in overalls who looked like he'd been waiting his entire life for this moment.

"Fischerdorf?" he said, leaning on his door with theatrical slowness. "You're in Zirchow, mate. Other side of the village. Past the church with the stork's nest. Can't miss it. Well, you did miss it, obviously." He found this hilarious. I found it less so, but I laughed anyway because his dog was staring at me with what I can only describe as judicial severity.

Twenty minutes later, after a humiliating three-point turn witnessed by a group of elderly cyclists who waved cheerily, I found the actual Fischerdorf. And what a place it is. Little wooden cottages huddled together like they're sharing gossip, proper thatched roofs that make you feel you've wandered into a Brothers Grimm illustration, and the Baltic doing that glittering thing it does when the sun hits it right. I stood there with my suitcase, feeling slightly less foolish, until a woman emerged from the neighbouring cottage carrying a watering can and an expression of profound assessment.

"You're the English one," she said. It wasn't a question. "I'm Birgit. I know everything here. It's my hobby and my curse." She told me she'd lived in the Fischerdorf for thirty-two years, that the thatch needed redoing every fifteen, and that the previous tenant in my cottage had been a man from Berlin who'd tried to barbecue mackerel in the bathroom. "The smell," she said, with the gravity of someone describing a war crime, "lingered through two winters."

She insisted on showing me the proper way to work the heating, which involved a ritual involving a knob, a prayer, and apparently the correct phase of the moon. "My husband Rudi could fix it blindfolded," she said, "but Rudi is currently fishing and will be fishing until he catches something or dies, whichever comes second." She said this with unmistakable affection.

That evening, determined to make amends with the local community after my navigational shame, I walked to the little harbour. There was Rudi, or at least I assumed it was Rudi, sitting on a bench with a rod that looked older than democracy. He didn't turn when I sat nearby, but he spoke anyway. "You're the one who argued with Dieter's tractor."

"Word travels."

"Nothing else to do." He reeled in nothing, examined it with practiced disappointment, and cast again. "Birgit sent you, didn't she? She sends everyone. Thinks I need supervising." He paused. "She's not wrong. Caught my own thumb in '87. Still haven't lived it down."

We sat in comfortable silence, which in my experience is a rare gift from strangers. A heron landed on a post nearby, looked at us with aristocratic disdain, and immediately looked away when it realised we had no fish to offer. "That's Heinrich," Rudi said. "Comes every evening. Thinks he's better than us. Probably is."

Walking back in the dusk, the Fischerdorf's lights coming on one by one, I thought about how I'd arrived full of plans for hiking and sightseeing and doing, doing, doing. Instead I'd spent my first day getting lost, being judged by livestock, and sitting quietly with a man who communicated primarily in meaningful pauses. And I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so immediately, peculiarly at home.

Birgit was waiting on her step, apparently conducting evening surveillance of the entire village. "Rudi still alive?" she asked.

"Regretfully."

"Good. He owes me dinner. You owe me a story tomorrow. English people always have terrible stories. It's your national characteristic."

I promised her my best effort, went inside, and spent twenty minutes trying to work the heating before giving up and putting on another jumper. Through the window, I could see Heinrich the heron still holding court on his post, and somewhere beyond, the dark Baltic rolling on as it has for millennia. I was cold, slightly hungry, and absolutely certain I'd made the right decision coming here.