I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving into Auerbach last autumn, though I will admit it took me to the wrong village first. There I was, confidently pulling up outside what I thought was our holiday let, only to realise I had parked in someone's actual driveway in a completely different Auerbach. The owner came out with a cup of tea in hand, looking utterly unsurprised, and simply pointed east. "The one you want is twenty minutes that way," he said, like this happened every Tuesday. I have never reversed out of a driveway with such theatrical enthusiasm.

When we finally found the proper place, a traditional Saxon house with timber framing that looked like it had been there since people first thought about beer, I was already starving and slightly traumatised. The key was in a lockbox, which of course I fumbled with for five minutes while my stomach audibly protested. The door opened onto a kitchen that immediately made me feel better, rustic beams, a proper cooker, and a wooden table that looked like it had hosted several centuries of heavy dinners. I dumped the bags and opened the fridge, which the previous guests had thoughtfully left completely empty except for a single jar of mustard. I stood there staring at it like it might transform into a pork knuckle if I wished hard enough.

We headed straight to the nearest pub, a ten-minute walk through streets that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and autumn leaves. The place was called something unpronounceable with too many consonants, and I loved it immediately. The landlord looked at my attempt to order in German with the patient expression of a man who had seen this many times before, then switched to perfect English and recommended the Sauerbraten. It arrived swimming in gravy with red cabbage that stained everything purple, and I ate it with the focused intensity of someone who had been lost in the wrong village only hours before. My partner had a pork schnitzel the size of a dinner plate and made the mistake of saying they could probably finish it. They could not finish it. The landlord nodded knowingly when he cleared the half-eaten mountain away.

The next morning I attempted to cook breakfast in that lovely kitchen, convinced I could recreate something authentic. I had bought eggs from a tiny farm shop down the road, proper Saxon bread from a bakery where the woman had laughed at my pronunciation of "Brotchen," and some local cheese I could not identify but trusted implicitly. What I produced was somehow both undercooked and burnt, a culinary magic trick I did not know I possessed. We ate it anyway, sitting at that ancient table, and I decided that some holiday meals are about the attempt rather than the result.

The Auerbach market happens on Saturdays, and I approached it with the confidence of someone who now had one successful pub meal under my belt. I bought things I could not name, pointed enthusiastically at sausages, and came away with a bag of mushrooms that the vendor assured me were "very special." Back at the house, I made a mushroom soup that tasted like the forest floor in the best possible way, and we ate it with more of that excellent bread while rain hit the old windows. I felt genuinely proud, which tells you everything about my usual cooking standards.

The pub became our regular spot. We tried the potato soup, which was thick enough to stand a spoon in, and once attempted the dumplings, which were heavy enough to use as ballast. The landlord started recognising us, which felt like a genuine achievement, and would recommend the next thing without being asked. On our last night he brought over two glasses of local beer on the house, and I understood exactly why people come back to places like this. It was not fancy. It was not trying to be anything other than what it was, warm, unpretentious, and absolutely committed to feeding you until you needed to be rolled home.

I left Auerbach with a slightly expanded waistline, a new appreciation for gravy, and the certain knowledge that there are at least two villages with the same name within driving distance of each other. I also left with a jar of that mustard from the fridge, which I had grown weirdly attached to. Some holidays are about seeing famous sights. This one was about bread, beer, and learning that my cooking improves dramatically when I have no idea what I am doing.