I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when our sat nav tried to send us up a footpath that was clearly meant for goats and very determined hikers. My partner Dave was adamant the machine knew best, right up until the moment a local man appeared from behind a wooden fence, scratching his head and looking at our Renault Clio with the kind of pity usually reserved for lost tourists in films. He spoke no English, but his eyebrows said everything. We reversed for what felt like three miles of sheer embarrassment, and by the time we finally found the proper road to Zakopane Koscielisko, I was ready to abandon the car entirely and walk the rest of the way.

The property itself was a proper wooden chalet, all dark beams and that distinctive mountain smell of pine and woodsmoke. But it was the people who made the first few hours absolutely unforgettable. Our neighbour, a woman called Halina who must have been in her seventies, appeared within minutes of our arrival. She was wearing a floral apron over a padded jacket and carrying a basket of mushrooms that she insisted on showing us in enormous detail, naming each variety in Polish with such theatrical enthusiasm that we nodded along as if we understood a single word. She pressed three enormous porcini into my hands, pointed at the stove, and mimed something that I later realised was probably a warning not to undercook them. We ate them that evening with butter and garlic, and spent the whole night slightly paranoid we had poisoned ourselves. We had not, thankfully.

The man who delivered our firewood was another story entirely. He arrived in a truck that looked older than my grandmother, chewing something that might have been tobacco or might have been a very resilient toffee. His name was Tadeusz, and he spoke exactly four words of English, all of them apparently learned from watching westerns. "Howdy," he said, tipping an imaginary hat. Then, pointing at the woodpile, "Many dollar." Then, seeing our confused faces, he laughed for about thirty seconds straight, slapped Dave on the back hard enough to wind him, and drove off without taking any money at all. We found a note under the windscreen wiper later saying we owed him a vodka. We never did track him down to pay, and I still feel slightly guilty about it.

The most unexpected encounter came at the little shop in Koscielisko village, where I went to buy milk and bread. The shopkeeper, a stern-looking man with enormous hands, took one look at my attempt to pronounce "prosze" and decided I needed immediate and comprehensive education. For twenty minutes, he made me repeat Polish words while his wife sat in the corner, knitting and occasionally correcting his own pronunciation with a snort of derision. By the end, I could order milk, thank someone, and apologise for my terrible Polish with reasonable confidence. His wife gave me a biscuit for effort. It was one of the best biscuits I have ever eaten.

That evening, sitting on the chalet's little balcony with a beer, watching the light fade over the Tatra mountains, Dave asked if I was glad we had come. I thought about Halina's mushrooms, Tadeusz's cowboy impression, the language lesson in the shop. The sat nav had been wrong about the route, but absolutely right about the destination. I was already wondering what characters tomorrow would bring.