I have never been so grateful for a thermos of tea in my entire life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling along the B85 towards Kranichfeld in late November, convinced we had timed our autumn break to perfection. The guidebooks had promised crisp golden mornings and misty valleys. What we got was a sudden cold snap, sleet that could not decide if it was rain or snow, and a sat-nav that developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis somewhere outside Weimar.

The mishap came at a particularly bleak lay-by. I had insisted on stopping to photograph what I called the "atmospheric Thuringian countryside," which in reality was a muddy field and a very sad-looking goat. In my enthusiasm, I managed to lock the car with the keys still inside, engine running, heater blasting. My partner's expression remains etched in my memory. A local farmer, emerging from nowhere like a weather-beaten guardian angel, helped us contact a locksmith in Bad Berka. Two hours, one lukewarm thermos refill, and a sum of money I refuse to disclose later, we were mobile again. The goat, I noted, had not moved.

By the time we reached our holiday home in Kranichfeld, dusk was already pressing against the windows. The property sat on a gentle slope, a traditional Thuringian house with timber elements that looked as though it had grown from the hillside rather than been built upon it. In summer, I imagine, the garden would be riotous with colour and the terrace would host long evenings of wine and grilled sausages. In late November, it presented a more austere face: bare fruit trees, frost-hardened soil, and a light dusting of snow that had begun to fall properly now we had arrived.

The seasonal timing shaped everything about those first hours. The owner, a practical woman named Frau Hartmann, had left the heating on low since morning, knowing our delayed arrival. She appeared at the door in a padded coat with a torch, checking we had found the key safe despite the darkness. "November," she said, as if this single word explained every possible misfortune. She showed us the wood-burning stove, emphasising its importance, and pointed out the insulated flask she had left with proper Thuringian potato soup. I could have embraced her.

Inside, the house revealed itself in layers as we explored by lamplight. The low ceilings and thick walls that would feel oppressive in high summer became immediately comforting. Every window framed blackness or the occasional sweep of car headlights on the road below. We discovered the kitchen still held late-season apples in a bowl, slightly wrinkled now but fragrant, and a jar of plum jam from the garden's own trees. Summer's abundance, preserved and waiting.

That first evening, we did nothing ambitious. We lit the stove, ate the soup with bread from a bakery Frau Hartmann had recommended in the village, and watched the snow begin to settle on the terrace furniture that would not see use for months. The cold outside amplified every small domestic pleasure. The creak of the floorboards, the particular warmth where you stood too close to the stove, the way my partner's face looked in firelight rather than summer sunshine.

I had worried that coming to Thuringia so late in the year was a mistake, that we would miss the famous forests in full colour, the outdoor swimming, the long light evenings. Standing at the window that first night, watching snow transform the garden into something quiet and unrecognisable, I understood that seasons do not merely decorate a place. They change how a place receives you, and how you must receive it in return. We had not arrived in Kranichfeld in spite of November. We had arrived because of it, with our locked car and our thermos and our willingness to be indoors when the world outside had turned inhospitable.

The goat, I later learned from Frau Hartmann, was called Klaus. He was apparently always sad-looking. Some things, unlike seasons, never change.