I'd never been to Thuringia before, and I'd certainly never stayed anywhere called a "Gahma," which I kept pronouncing wrong until the owner gently corrected me. Three times. The journey from Calais had been blessedly uneventful until about twenty miles from the property, when my phone decided this was the perfect moment to delete its own maps app. Not crash, not freeze. Actually delete itself, as if offended by my destination. I spent forty minutes circling a village called Wipperdorf that I'm fairly certain doesn't exist on purpose, growing increasingly intimate with a roundabout featuring a very judgmental bronze stork.

When I finally found the Gahma, tucked among beech trees near the Thuringian Forest, I was too frazzled to appreciate it. The owner, a woman called Renate with the patient eyes of someone who has met many lost Britons, simply handed me a cup of coffee and pointed at a garden chair. "Sit," she said. Not unkindly. Just factual.

I sat.

The garden was ordinary in the best possible way. A patch of lawn that had clearly given up on perfection decades ago. A plum tree dropping fruit with theatrical timing. A wooden bench facing nothing in particular except a hedge and, beyond it, the soft green rise of the forest. Somewhere a blackbird was having an argument with itself. I finished the coffee without looking at my phone once, which for me qualifies as a minor spiritual conversion.

The Gahma itself was simple: whitewashed walls, wooden beams that Renate warned me were "original and therefore not straight," a small kitchen that smelled of the previous guest's cinnamon. I unpacked my bag with the lethargy of someone who has accepted that ambition is optional here. My books came out. My walking shoes stayed in.

I had brought three novels and a biography I'd been pretending to read since March. By Tuesday afternoon I'd finished two of the novels and was making honest progress on the third. The biography remained untouched, which felt like the correct decision. Some books travel with you precisely so you can ignore them.

The days developed a rhythm that I hesitate to call a routine, since that implies effort. Morning coffee in the garden, watching Renate's hens execute their morning patrol with military indifference. Late breakfast of bread from the bakery in Friedrichroda, which I drove to once and then decided was too far, settling instead for the slightly inferior but vastly closer bread from Tambach-Dietharz. Afternoon reading in the plum tree's unreliable shade. The fruit kept falling. I kept eating them, slightly bruised, warm from the sun.

I did walk once, properly, into the forest. For twenty minutes. Then I found another bench, remarkably similar to the one in the garden, and read there instead. The trees were very tall and very quiet. I felt briefly guilty about my lack of vigorous German hiking, then remembered that Thuringia has been here for millions of years and my step count concerns nobody.

By the end of the week, I had a tan line from my watch, which I stopped wearing. I had finished all three novels. I had eaten approximately forty plums and developed a minor obsession with Renate's blackbird, which I named Klaus despite having no idea of its gender. I had not solved any problems, improved myself, or achieved anything measurable.

On my last morning, Renate found me in the garden and asked if I'd visited the Wartburg, or the Rennsteig trail, or any of the sensible attractions. I admitted I had not. She smiled, not with disappointment but with something like recognition. "Good," she said. "The Gahma is for sitting."

I drove home by a different route, deliberately, and got lost only once.