I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Bad Schlema did not disappoint. We had been driving through Saxony for the better part of four hours, my partner navigating with the confidence of someone who had briefly glanced at a map three days prior, when I announced with great certainty that our cottage was in the next village. It was not. It was in fact two villages back, tucked up a lane I had dismissed as a farm track. We performed a rather awkward three-point turn in front of a very patient local on a bicycle, who watched us with the resigned expression of someone who had seen this many times before.

By the time we found the actual property, a modest but charming place on the edge of town, I was ready to abandon the car and simply live in it. The owner had left the key in a small metal box that I promptly dropped behind a flower pot, spending a good ten minutes on my hands and knees in the gravel while my partner stood over me offering unhelpful commentary about my fine motor skills. We were not off to a dignified start.

The cottage itself, though, made up for everything the moment we stepped inside. It had that particular stillness that only comes from a house that has been properly empty for a while, a kind of held breath. The living room smelled faintly of wood polish and old books, and the sofa looked like it had absorbed several decades of afternoon naps. I knew immediately that this was where I would be spending the majority of my time.

I should say here that I am not one of those holidaymakers who arrives with an itinerary. My partner had brought a leaflet about local silver mines and a hiking map with routes marked in aggressive red pen. I had brought three novels, a pair of slippers, and a sincere commitment to doing as close to nothing as humanly possible. The garden, which stretched out behind the cottage in a slightly overgrown but thoroughly pleasant fashion, became my headquarters. There was a wooden bench positioned in a patch of afternoon sun, and I adopted it with the territorial instinct of a middle-aged cat.

The days that followed settled into a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as rhythm at all. I would wake without an alarm, make coffee in the small kitchen with its slightly wonky kettle, and then migrate to the garden with my book. The neighbour's cat began visiting around mid-morning, apparently having decided I was too sedentary to be threatening. We developed an understanding. I would occasionally reach down to scratch behind its ears; it would shed on my cardigan. It felt like a fair exchange.

My partner did venture out once or twice, returning with reports of the Kurpark and the local radon baths, which apparently have something to do with the town's history as a spa destination. I nodded along politely from my bench, turning a page. The most strenuous activity I undertook was walking to the small shop at the end of the lane for bread, which I would eat in the garden with cheese and tomatoes and a general sense of accomplishment that I had managed even this much.

There is something about the light in Saxony in late afternoon that makes stillness feel like an active choice rather than mere laziness. The garden would grow long shadows, and I would find myself simply watching the leaves move, thinking about nothing in particular. I am normally quite skilled at filling my head with noise, with plans and worries and the low hum of unfinished tasks. Here, that noise simply did not seem to make the journey with me.

On our final evening, my partner found me in the garden at dusk, having read perhaps three pages in two hours. "You've barely moved," they said, not unkindly. I considered this. "I have moved internally," I replied, which even I recognised as pretentious nonsense. But there was something to it. The cottage had not asked anything of me. It had simply held space for me to stop, to be unproductive without guilt, to let the world continue at its usual pace while I opted out for a while.

We left the key in the metal box without dropping it, which felt like a small victory. I took one last look at the garden, already wondering when I might return to do absolutely nothing in it again.