I have never been so pleased to see a wooden veranda in all my life. Twelve hours, two delayed trains, and one spectacularly ill-advised decision to rely on my phone's GPS rather than actual directions had finally led me to a small red cottage just outside Arboga, in the quiet heart of Sodermanland. The mishap? Oh, that came about three hours in, when I confidently strode onto the wrong platform at Stockholm Central and found myself heading towards Gavle before I realised my error. Nothing quite like the slow dawning horror of Swedish countryside flying past the window while you mutter "this doesn't look right" to yourself for twenty solid minutes.

By the time I actually arrived, my rucksack felt like it contained several house bricks rather than the carefully folded layers I had packed. The cottage sat nestled among birch trees, its paintwork that particular shade of red that seems to glow in the late afternoon light. I fumbled with the key box code, dropped the instructions twice, and very nearly locked myself out while trying to photograph the whole thing for my sister. Standard behaviour, really.

Stepping inside for the first time, the smell hit me immediately. Not the musty damp I had half-expected from a wooden property, but something cleaner. Pine, perhaps, and the faint suggestion of whatever the previous guests had been cooking. The kitchen was compact in that efficient Scandinavian way, everything within arm's reach and not a single wasted drawer. I opened the fridge out of pure nosiness and found it empty but spotless, which felt like both a disappointment and a challenge. The living area opened directly onto that veranda through wide glass doors, and I stood there for a moment with my coat still on, staring out at nothing more dramatic than a small garden and beyond it, trees. It was utterly, gloriously unremarkable, and I felt something in my shoulders actually drop.

The bedroom was upstairs, accessed by stairs steep enough to qualify as a ladder in any reasonable person's estimation. I climbed them cautiously, still wearing my boots, and immediately felt guilty about the mud I was probably trailing. The bed was made with the sort of military precision that made my own efforts at home seem frankly slapdash. Two small windows looked out onto the same view, and I caught myself thinking how dark it would get at night, how quiet. London does not prepare you for this kind of quiet. I stood there listening to absolutely nothing and found it slightly unnerving, if I am honest. The silence had weight to it.

Back downstairs, I made the obligatory terrible cup of tea with the wrong sort of milk I had panic-bought at the station. Sat on the veranda steps, boots finally off, I watched a blackbird work its way across the lawn with the focused intensity of someone who actually knew what they were doing. I had no plan for the evening beyond a walk to the nearby lake I had read about, perhaps a wander into Arboga proper to find something edible. For someone who normally schedules relaxation into fifteen-minute increments, this felt almost transgressive.

The funny thing about getting something wrong so early in a journey is that it somehow lowers the stakes for everything that follows. I had already made my fool of myself on a train; the rest could only improve. The cottage felt like a place that had witnessed worse arrivals than mine, had absorbed more dramatic mishaps into its wooden walls. I finished my terrible tea, considered attempting another, and decided instead to simply sit there until the light changed. Which it did, slowly, the red of the cottage deepening to something almost burgundy as the sun dropped lower. I had nowhere to be, nothing I absolutely had to achieve. The blackbird finished its business and left. I stayed where I was, feeling the particular pleasure of having finally, despite everything, arrived exactly where I meant to be.