I have never been so grateful for a sat nav's passive-aggressive "recalculating" as I was driving to our little place in Strangnas. We'd picked up the hire car at Arlanda, full of that smug holiday confidence, and I'd insisted on taking the "scenic route" past Lake Malaren. Two wrong turns and one accidental tour of an industrial estate later, my partner was giving me that look. You know the one. The "you said you knew where you were going" look, delivered in complete silence because we'd been together long enough that words were unnecessary.

We finally rolled into Strangnas in the late afternoon, and there it was: our red wooden cottage, sitting among birch trees with that particular Swedish self-assurance. I was still recovering from my navigational humiliation when the door opened and our neighbour appeared. Bengt. Seventy-ish, wearing a flat cap that had seen better decades, and carrying a mug of something that steamed in the cool air.

"You are the English," he announced, which wasn't a question. "I saw the car. Very lost-looking car."

I admitted our scenic detour. Bengt nodded slowly, as if this confirmed everything he'd suspected about foreigners.

"Come," he said. "I have coffee. You need it."

His kitchen was a museum of peculiarities. Fishing trophies shared space with ceramic elves and what appeared to be a collection of every postcard sent to him since 1983. His wife, Ingrid, emerged from somewhere, wiping her hands on a tea towel embroidered with a moose wearing sunglasses. She said nothing, simply assessed us with pale blue eyes, then produced a plate of cardamom buns from nowhere.

"She does not speak English," Bengt said, though Ingrid's expression suggested she understood perfectly well and was choosing dignified silence. "She thinks you will be noisy. I told her, English people are quiet because they are sorry about their empire."

I wasn't sure how to respond to this, so I ate my bun.

Bengt talked. About the lake, about fishing, about the time a Danish tourist had tried to swim to the island and needed rescuing. "Very stupid man. We do not mention him now." Ingrid refilled our cups without being asked, her movements precise and faintly disapproving, though I noticed she put an extra bun on my partner's plate.

The next morning I was attempting to work out the composting toilet when another figure appeared: a woman called Ulrika, walking a dog that resembled a small, angry cloud. She was Bengt's daughter, visiting from Eskilstuna, and she had opinions about everything.

"The toilet," she said, watching my struggle with undisguised amusement, "it is simple. You must respect it. It is not like English toilets, which I understand flush everything away so you never have to think about yourselves."

She told us about the local swimming spot, the best place to buy smoked fish, and why we absolutely must not miss the Wednesday market. "My father will tell you stories. He is famous for stories. Some of them even happened." She left us with a wave, the angry cloud dog straining at its lead.

That evening we walked down to the water, still digesting Bengt's coffee and Ingrid's silent judgment and Ulrika's cheerful directness. The lake was perfectly still, the kind of stillness that makes you feel slightly ridiculous for ever rushing anywhere. My partner took my hand, which was either affectionate or a reminder that I'd nearly got us stranded in that industrial estate.

I thought about Bengt's flat cap, and Ingrid's embroidered moose, and Ulrika's dog that looked like it was plotting something. We'd come for the Swedish countryside, the red cottages, the proper darkness at night. What we'd found was something better: people who treated our foreignness not as something to accommodate politely, but as an endless source of gentle, unflinching entertainment.

I was still lost, in a way. But I didn't mind so much anymore.