Storks have always been great birds of myth and legend. Perhaps the most common and widely held of these, is that they deliver babies in a cloth hanging from their long beaks. The origins of this belief are very old and obscure although common to many cultures. In Norse mythology, for example, storks were seen as symbols of family values. The fact that they traditionally returned from their migration in spring, a time when many babies, are born, undoubtedly fed into the legend, especially as their colour – white – is also linked to purity.

The myth garnered new traction in the 19^th Century when Hans Christian Anderson used it in one of his children’s stories. In prudish Victorian England, where parents were often reluctant to discuss the facts of life with their children, it became a useful way of obscuring the realities of sex and birth.

In Southern Africa, the bird has a slightly different association. To the English speakers in colonial Natal, as well as many of the local tribes, it was known as the Locust Bird because the insect was one of its main food sources. Thus, the S.Sotho name for the White Stork is mokotatsie, derived from kota ‘peck’ plus tsie ‘locust’ (see Zulu Bird Names and Bird Lore by Adrian Koopman). The White Stork is not, in fact, utterly white although that is its predominant colour. It also has a smattering of black. “White” is just a quick shorthand description. The bird is a migrant, flying from its nesting sites in Central and Southern Europe all the way down to the southern tip of Africa.

How on earth do they find their way? How can they complete a feat most humans wouldn’t be able to do without a GPS or compass? It is a question that has long intrigued people. Scientists are still not completely sure although they think the storks, like other migrants, rely on available compass cues from visual landmarks, the sun (and, at night, the stars) and magnetic fields.

I have always been fascinated by storks. For me, it is a privilege to encounter them in the wild. On the ground, they deport themselves with quiet dignity and style. They are gracefully proportioned with elegant necks and legs to match. Although shy and wary they also seem to have an affinity for human settlement. As a child, I had pored over the pictures of them in my storybooks, intrigued about how they were able to live parallel lives, one in Europe, one in Africa. I would always get very excited when they mysteriously appeared out of nowhere

Hitherto, the only link I had been able to make between the two places had been in my imagination. This changed, back in 1989, when my English cousin invited me to join her on a car trip through the three countries that formed the main part of the old Hapsburg Empire – Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I had made other pilgrimages in my life. I had been to Wordsworth’s house in the Lake District, and I had seen where the Bronte sisters had lived in Yorkshire. So why not go to where storks go when they leave Southern Africa?

I won’t pretend that this was my only reason for undertaking this pilgrimage to the Eastern bloc but it was certainly a compelling one. I decided to do it.

The journey proceeded. Unlike the storks, I took the easy route and flew by Jumbo jet to Heathrow. Landing in the country, I soon realised I had another problem – I didn’t have enough money to finance the remainder of my trip. So I went looking for a job. I was lucky. My English cousin, who ran a catering business, had just secured a contract at Wimbledon and was looking for extra staff.

And so for the duration of the event, I became a lowly dishwasher.

The hours were incredibly long and it was mind-bending, back-breaking work but, in a strange way, it was educational. It made me see life through a different lens and from a slightly altered perspective. For the two weeks, I was there, I didn’t get to watch a single match of tennis although I did see a few of its stars (and actually had a long chat with tennis legend Billie Jean King as I was carrying a dustbin out the dining area to empty it), as well as a lost-looking David Hasselhoff, of Night Rider fame, who – assuming I was a local – stopped to ask me directions. I concluded his clever car which could no doubt have told him which way to go must have been in for repairs.

While working at Wimbledon, I stayed with another cousin, Julian, who lived on an old boat moored on the banks of the Thames about half a mile upstream from Greenwich. Built in 1895, in the yard of Ferdinand Schibau in Eibling, Germany, and named the Aegir, it had originally operated as a steam-driven tug pulling ships down the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Since then it has survived two World Wars and numerous changes of ownership and now went by the name Sabine.

Over the years its body, paintwork and furnishings had deteriorated but Julian was busy renovating it with the intention of turning it back into a working vessel. In the interim, it served as a sort of comfortable, floating cottage cluttered with thumbed books and maps, old furniture and an extensive collection of rock albums which very much reflected my taste. It is hard to explain why – I had no previous experience living on a boat in the middle of a huge, bustling, cosmopolitan, city – but I felt completely at home.

I found the smell of brine, oil and damp sand, as well as its creaks and groans, oddly comforting. Secluded in an old boatyard, it was the perfect place for thinking and remembering and wondering about my forthcoming expedition to find out where the storks go. I loved sitting on its deck, sipping coffee, with the mud foreshore below and the forlorn gulls circling above and the odd barge and a warship and even an old sailboat drifting past.

With Wimbledon over (Boris Becker beat the defending champion, Stefan Edburg) and having raised enough cash I embarked on the second leg of my adventure. This took me across the English Channel, through Germany and Austria and then into Hungary.

We holed up in Budapest for a week, trying to get a sense of what life was like in a communist country. As a more open one, I got the feeling that Hungary was a generally more agreeable place to live than those hard-line states – Rumania and Albania for example – where a purer, more primitive form of communism prevailed (although that didn’t exclude party officials from enjoying a better lifestyle than the workers), One got the sense there was less of the prying and repression to which the proletariat of other Soviet-bloc countries was subjected.

At the end of our stay in this beautiful, if somewhat run-down, city we drove out along the E7, heading towards the westernmost end of the country.

Our route took us through some of the hilly parts of Hungary, which is rather flat. There are numerous old fortresses, limestone caves, dark, gloomy woods and charming old baroque towns along this road, including Eger, famed for its fruity red wine known as Egri Bikaver or Bull’s Blood of Eger.

Not all the country was so attractive. There was also Hungary’s second-largest city to contend with – Miskolc.

I had been pleasantly surprised by Budapest but Miskolc is everything awful you have heard about communism and more – a bleak, sci-fi fantasy landscape that could have served as an alternative setting for Blade Runner. Row upon row of uniform, ugly grey apartment blocks dominate the horizon, all linking together to create a picture of unremitting dreariness and gloom – not improved by all the dust and smoke and poisonous chemicals being belched out of the local factories.

We spent the night in Szerencs in a castle-cum- hotel, surrounded by rubble and uncut grass, which had featured in several battles against the Turks in the 17^th century and also served as a home for Ferenc Rackoczi, a Hungarian nobleman who led a nearly successful uprising against the Hapsburg Empire. He is now regarded as a national hero.

The next day, in the small village of Tokay, I finally found where the storks go. There they sat in their nests built on top of street lamps and chimney pots or on wire platforms thoughtfully provided by the local citizenry who regard them as good omens. It is difficult to describe how excited I was to see them. It was like suddenly finding yourself among old, familiar, friends after a long absence.

The storks seemed equally bemused to see me, staring quizzically down their beaks at me while I photographed them. I wondered if they could tell, by my accent, who I was and where I had come from.

Pretty in the sunshine, the countryside around Tokay was wonderfully unspoilt. There was a slow unchanging, almost medieval feel to it. Bees buzzed in the air. Flowering shrubs ran wild on the common ground. In the fields, we saw grizzled old peasants with scythes, and ancient black-frocked old crones with headscarves and gumboots, hunched over their hoes. As we drove into town we had to give way to horse-drawn carts.

The bucolic rural atmosphere was partly offset when, from the centre of town, came a sudden blast of rock music. We soon found its source – several youths were erecting a rather crude wooden stage there, urged on by a group of long-haired hippies, sitting on the steps of the local church, surrounded by empty wine bottles.

What Tokay is famous for – another reason I wanted to go there – is its wines. Often referred to as “the king of wines, the wine of kings” this beautiful, gold-coloured wine is supposed to be able to restore a dying emperor. It certainly resuscitated me…

Tokay comes in three different forms: Tokaji Furmint (Dry), Tokaji Szamorodini (medium-sweet) and Tokaji Aszu (full-blooded, very sweet). Its excellence is attributed to the properties of the local soil, the mineral content of the water, the production methods and – some say – the peculiar quality of the sunshine.

Several privately owned cellars were open for tasting, or one could visit the large, state-run consortium at the neighbouring village of Tolcsva. Alternatively, one could pop into a borozo and drink with the locals.

Glazed with alcohol, I took a stroll, that afternoon, up through the graveyard and into the hills above town. From here I had a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. Directly below lay Tokay itself with its quaint, twisting, cobblestone streets, bright, orange-red, church spires and the rather melancholy shell of an old synagogue – a tragic and haunting reminder of the fact that over 80% of Hungary’s Jews perished in the last World War.

Beyond that stretched the Great Plains of Hungary with the oddly named Bodrog River curving off to the one side. It was easy to imagine the Ottoman army sweeping across this landscape, scattering all in their wake. To the East, beyond a mist-covered ridge of hills, lay the USSR. Directly behind me was Czechoslovakia, my destination for the next day. To my south lay the mysterious Transylvania, best known for its blood-thirsty vampires and howling wolves.

Sitting up there with only the occasional shouts of children or the barking of a dog to disturb the eerie stillness and silence of the place, I felt I was on the edge of the known world.

Then, reality barged back in: I glanced at my watch and realised it was time to head down.

That evening we had supper in the local hotel, whose drab grey walls had been partly offset by the roof, painted in brilliant rainbow colours. The interior was oppressively dark but the mood was partially offset by a cheerful gipsy violinist who wandered from table to table, serenading us.

I left Tokay the next day feeling the perplexity of irreconcilable differences: the old way of life versus the new cult of Marxist-style progress which had been so clumsily superimposed upon it. There was nothing unusual in any of this I suppose. Countless cultures have waxed and waned.

And at least the storks were still there to provide a sense of continuity and remind us where babies come from…