I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour. Three hours out of Erfurt and mine decided that "road" was merely a suggestion, sending me down what I can only describe as a glorified farm track somewhere past Suhl. I was halfway up a hill, questioning every life choice that led me to a hire Vauxhall Corsa with suspension made of cardboard, when a chap on a tractor appeared from a hedge. He did not look surprised to see me. He looked like he had been waiting for this moment his entire life.

"Goldlauter?" he said, before I could even wind down the window properly. I nodded, feeling like a contestant on some bizarre rural quiz show. He pointed back the way I had come, made a gesture that involved three lefts and what I think was a prayer, then drove off without another word. I reversed for what felt like a mile. The Corsa made a noise I have never heard before and hope never to hear again.

When I finally found the place, tucked into the wooded hillside above Heidersbach, I was ready to kiss the gravel. The cottage sat there like something from a postcard that had gone slightly feral - all timber framing and flower boxes that had not been told it was almost October. A woman was sweeping the porch with the kind of vigorous efficiency that suggested she had been doing this since approximately 1952. This was Ingrid, the owner, and she sized me up in approximately half a second.

"You took the scenic route," she said. Not a question. A diagnosis.

I admitted to the tractor incident. She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a judgment, then handed me the keys and a bottle of something clear that she called "for later." I did not ask what it was. Some things you accept on trust.

The first evening I walked down to the village proper, partly to stretch my legs and partly because Ingrid had mentioned that the pub did something involving potatoes and regret. The place was tiny - a handful of houses, a church with a steeple that leaned slightly as if tired, and the Gasthof where I found myself squeezed between a table of card players and a man who introduced himself only as "the one who fixes the heating."

He fixed the heating, apparently, for most of the valley. This was his season of rest, his moment of glory before the cold came and everyone remembered his phone number. He talked about boilers the way other men talk about football, with passion and statistics and occasional dark references to the winter of 2012. His wife sat beside him, rolling her eyes with the practised ease of someone who had heard every boiler anecdote at least forty times. She asked me about London. I told her about tube strikes. She found this hilarious. "At least your trains move," she said. "Ours just stop and everyone gets out and looks at the engine until someone feels guilty enough to fix it."

By the second evening I was a regular, which in a village this size meant simply remaining visible for more than twenty-four hours. A woman called Renate appeared at my table with a plate of Thuringian dumplings she insisted I try. She did not work there. She had just "made too many" and was distributing them like some kind of carbohydrate fairy godmother. Her husband had been the local postman for thirty years, she told me, and still walked his old route every morning out of habit. "He delivers nothing," she said, with evident pride. "Just says hello to the dogs."

On my final morning I found Ingrid on the porch again, sweeping the same spot. She asked if I had tried the clear liquid. I admitted I had not yet worked up the courage. She laughed, properly this time, and told me to take it home. "Next time you get lost," she said, "drink it first. Then you will not care."

I have it on my kitchen shelf now. I am almost afraid to open it. Some memories stay sharper when they keep their edges, and I rather like knowing that somewhere in the Thuringian woods, there is a woman with a broom who thinks I am exactly as foolish as I probably am.