I have to confess that my journey to Portoroz began with the sort of competence I have come to expect from myself, which is to say none whatsoever. Somewhere between Ljubljana and the coast, I managed to leave my phone charger in a service station toilet, then spent twenty minutes arguing with my hire car's sat nav in what I can only describe as broken Slovenian mixed with theatrical hand gestures. The machine kept insisting I drive into the Gulf of Trieste. I nearly obliged out of sheer spite.

By the time I reached the property, a smart little place tucked into the hillside with a balcony that practically demanded an evening drink, I was in that peculiar state of sweaty exhaustion where you forget how doors work. A man appeared from next door as I fumbled with the key safe. He introduced himself as Stanko, retired fisherman, current obsessive gardener, and self-appointed neighbourhood watchdog. Within ninety seconds he had established my marital status, my opinions on British weather, and my criminal record, which he seemed disappointed was nonexistent. "No drama," he sighed, shaking his head as though I had personally let him down.

The balcony did indeed get that evening drink, though Stanko invited himself to provide commentary. He brought his own wine, which tasted like something his grandfather had made in a shed during a particularly vengeful mood. "Is traditional," he insisted, watching my face with undisguised delight as I attempted not to cough. His wife, Dragica, emerged periodically to shout corrections at him from their kitchen window. Apparently he had the chronology of local history entirely wrong, his opinions on German tourists were too generous, and he was sitting in my chair uninvited. She was not wrong on any count, though Stanko waved her away with the practiced weariness of forty years of marriage.

The following morning I encountered Miha at the little bakery down the lane, a man whose entire personality seemed built around the fact that he had once met the president's cousin. He spoke of this encounter the way others might describe witnessing a miracle, and he worked it into absolutely any conversation. I asked about bread. He asked if I knew the president's cousin also ate bread. I mentioned the weather. The president's cousin, apparently, had opinions on weather. I never learned what these opinions were, only that they existed and were significant. Miha gave me an extra pastry "for the journey," though I was walking approximately two hundred metres. "You look like you need it," he said, with the sort of frank assessment I was learning to expect from this coast.

There was also Vesna, who ran the tiny fruit stall near the harbour and conducted all business through a series of elaborate sighs. Buying peaches from her felt like requesting a personal favour of tremendous inconvenience. She examined my selections with visible despair, rearranged them twice, and finally accepted my money as though it pained her physically. Yet when I returned the next day, she had set aside figs she thought I might prefer, and she described their provenance with something approaching tenderness. "My sister's tree," she said, as though admitting to a scandal. "Don't tell anyone."

By my third evening, Stanko had progressed to inviting me for actual dinner rather than impromptu balcony ambush. Dragica remained sceptical of my character but fed me anyway, producing a fish soup that made me briefly emotional. Stanko talked over the entire meal, mostly about neighbours who had wronged him in ways I could not entirely follow, involving disputes about parking spaces that dated back to the Yugoslav era. Dragica interjected only to contradict his dates, his motives, and his pronunciation of certain village names. They bickered with the rhythm of a long-established double act, and I understood suddenly that I was audience rather than guest, that this performance happened nightly with whoever was available.

I left Portoroz with Stanko's grandfather's wine recipe scrawled on a receipt, which I have since lost, and with Vesna's sighs still echoing somewhere in my memory. The coast had given me precisely what I had not known I needed: not solitude, which I had booked, but connection of the most ordinary and stubborn kind. I think of Miha sometimes when I eat bread, and wonder if the president's cousin would approve.