The train from Copenhagen was meant to be the easy bit, wasn't it? I had it all planned: forty minutes of gliding through Skane's flat green fields, perhaps a coffee, definitely a bit of smug window-gazing at all that southern Swedish countryside. What actually happened was that I got off at Lund Central, patted my pockets with that sudden cold feeling, and realised my phone had spent the last hour having its own holiday somewhere near Malmo. Still on the train, presumably. Probably having a better time than me.

I stood there on the platform with my wheelie bag and my rapidly deflating sense of competence, trying to remember whether the holiday cottage was north or south of the station. The NOVASOL booking confirmation, with its actual address and sensible instructions, was of course on my phone. Along with the map. And my Swedish phrasebook app. And my ability to function as a moderately capable adult.

A woman with a bicycle and a very practical-looking raincoat must have spotted my panic. She wheeled over and said something in Swedish, caught my blank expression, and switched to English with the effortless ease of someone who has spent years dealing with lost tourists. "You look like a person who has just given their phone to the train gods," she said. I admitted this was precisely the case. She laughed, told me her name was Ingrid, and produced her own phone to look up my cottage address. "Ah, the old schoolhouse on Klostergatan," she said. "I know the owner, Lars. He grows tomatoes in his bathroom. You will like him."

She walked me most of the way there, which took perhaps fifteen minutes through Lund's compact cobblestoned centre. Ingrid pointed out the cathedral, the university buildings, the bakery where she claimed they made "the only proper kanelbulle in Skane." She told me she was retired from something vaguely medical and now spent her time cycling between charity shops and arguing with her neighbour about composting. "Bengt," she said, with the particular tone of someone who has years of history packed into a single name. "He means well. But his definition of 'brown matter' is flexible."

We found the cottage easily enough, a charming red wooden building with white trim that looked exactly like the photographs I could no longer access. Ingrid insisted on waiting while I knocked, which was fortunate because the door was opened by a man in wellington boots holding a very small and annoyed-looking dog.

"Lars," Ingrid announced. "This one has sacrificed her phone to the railways. Be kind."

Lars turned out to be everything Ingrid had promised and more. He had the slightly weathered look of someone who spent serious time outdoors, and he immediately invited us both in for coffee despite my protests that I was imposing. The cottage interior was simple and warm, with wooden floors and a kitchen that smelled of something herby and slow-cooked. The famous bathroom tomatoes, visible through a half-open door, were indeed thriving in a window box situation that looked technically ingenious and probably not entirely building-regulation compliant.

"December tomatoes," Lars said proudly, as if this explained everything about his character. "People say it cannot be done. But they do not know my secret." He tapped his nose mysteriously. Ingrid rolled her eyes and helped herself to a biscuit from a tin.

The dog, introduced as Sture, spent the entire visit glaring at me with the focused intensity of a creature who had not approved my arrival. Lars ignored this, chatting away about the cottage's history, the university students who rented it in term time, and his previous career as a marine biologist that had somehow led him here, to tomato cultivation and holiday letting in inland Skane.

"You must meet the baker tomorrow," Ingrid said, as she finally prepared to leave. "Gunnar. He opens at six and judges everyone who arrives after seven. But his bread is worth the shame."

I spent the evening in the cottage's small garden with a cup of tea and Sture, who had reluctantly decided I might be tolerable if I sat very still and did not make any sudden movements. The flat Skane landscape stretched out beyond the hedge, all fields and distant farm buildings in the long northern dusk. My phone was still missing in action, but I found I did not mind as much as expected. There was something rather freeing about being temporarily uncontactable, about having arrived through accident and the kindness of strangers rather than my own careful planning.

Lars had left me a map, hand-drawn on the back of an envelope, showing the location of Gunnar's bakery, the best cycling route to the cathedral, and a warning about Bengt's composting opinions. "Skane people will talk to you," he had said, with a shrug that suggested this was simply how things were. "We cannot help it. You will learn everything about everyone. This is not always good, but it is never boring."

I thought about this as the light finally faded and Sture deigned to rest his chin on my foot. My first hours in Lund had been nothing like my imagined smooth arrival, but they had been something better: properly, messily human. The phone could wait. I had tomatoes to inspect, bread to be judged for, and apparently a neighbourly composting dispute to somehow navigate. The holiday, I suspected, was going to be far more interesting than my original plan.