I have never been so relieved to see a toilet brush in my life. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The journey to Kolobrzeg began with what I can only describe as classic overconfidence. I had decided to drive from the UK, which in my head sounded romantic and spontaneous. In reality it meant seventeen hours of continental motorways, a ferry crossing where I ate three successive croissants out of sheer boredom, and one spectacular navigational error just outside Szczecin. My phone, apparently fluent in Polish sarcasm, directed me down what I can only call a farm track. I spent twenty minutes reversing past confused geese while a man in a tractor watched with the patient amusement of someone who had seen this exact scene many times before.

By the time I reached the holiday home, I was vibrating with caffeine and mild hysteria. The property sat on a quiet residential street, a solid brick building with that particular Baltic architecture that manages to look both cheerful and slightly stern, like a grandmother who might pinch your cheek or tell you off for slouching. I fumbled with the key safe, dropped the code twice, and finally stumbled through the door with my suitcase catching on the frame.

This is where the toilet brush comes in. I had developed what I shall politely call a digestive disagreement with a motorway service station pierogi several hours earlier. I burst into the bathroom with the urgency of a man fleeing a burning building, only to discover I had no idea how the Polish plumbing worked. Buttons, levers, a small panel with symbols that looked like they belonged on a spacecraft. I stood there, desperate and increasingly philosophical about mortality, until my eyes landed on the toilet brush and I realised the flush mechanism was operated by a foot pedal. I nearly wept with gratitude. This is travel, I thought. This is growth.

Once I had composed myself, I ventured out to explore. The walk to the seafront took perhaps fifteen minutes, down streets lined with low apartment blocks and the occasional villa converted into a guesthouse. Kolobrzeg has that particular Baltic resort atmosphere in late spring, before the proper crowds arrive. Everything feels slightly provisional, as if the town is still deciding whether to wake up properly.

I found a small pierogi bar near the harbour, the kind with plastic tablecloths and a menu handwritten in three languages with varying degrees of accuracy. The woman running it, Basia, had the build of a retired shot putter and the warmth of someone who had decided long ago that strangers were just friends who had not bought enough dumplings yet. She spoke English in fragments, assembled with cheerful improvisation.

"You," she said, pointing at me with a wooden spoon. "English?"

I admitted it.

"Brexit," she announced, with the satisfaction of someone who had been waiting to use this word. Then she laughed, a proper belly laugh, and brought me complimentary pickled mushrooms.

We talked, or rather communicated through gestures, pointing, and her occasional consultations with a teenage girl in the back who turned out to be her granddaughter and spoke actual English. Basia had run this place for thirty-two years. She had seen German tourists, then none, then many again. She remembered when the harbour was mainly fishing boats, before the yacht people arrived with their complicated coffee orders. She thought the new spa hotels were "okay, okay" but missed the old sanatorium where she had worked as a kitchen girl, feeding convalescents thin broth and believing she was part of something important.

"You are alone?" she asked, with the directness that seems particular to Polish grandmothers.

I said I was.

"Good," she decided. "Alone, you pay attention."

I walked back to the house as evening came on, carrying a paper bag of her pierogi that she had refused to let me pay for. The Baltic air had that sharp, mineral quality it gets when the day turns, and somewhere a dog was barking at seagulls with professional dedication. I thought about Basia's thirty-two years, about my toilet brush epiphany, about how travel strips you back to basics whether you plan for it or not. The house waited with its slightly stern brick face, and I found I was already looking forward to morning, to whatever small human encounter the day might bring, to being someone who pays attention.