London

My journey back to Sydney began at London's Victoria Coach Station in the company of people with Billy Ray Cyrus haircuts. I hadn't planned it that way. I hadn't even imagined it could possibly be that way. But circumstances - well, OK, a severe lack of funds - meant that I would be catching a bus straight through from London to Prague. Those very same circumstances meant that the coach would be an Eastern European one.

The ticket had only cost £45, which I didn't think was too bad for a 22-hour trip across Europe. I bought it from a company that advertised in TNT, a magazine that mysteriously appears outside tube stations in places like Clapham and Ealing and Shepherds Bush, and other places cheap enough to attract slumming Aussie backpackers. It claims to be a 'guide to free-spirited adventure' but in reality it's more of a 'how to' guide to the debauched lifestyle that passes as living as an Aussie in London. The bus company certainly knew their demographic. Across the top of the ad, in bold print, was 'Don't forget. Beer only costs 12p a pint in Prague'. I considered myself lucky to get a seat.

I shouldn't have. Even the prospect of cheap alcohol hadn't lured any other travellers to use this particular bus company. There were only Eastern Europeans in shiny tracksuits, denim jackets and achy breaky coiffures. The really frightening thing was that they all had exactly the same haircut - the men, the women, the children, even the driver (although in all honesty his hair looked more like Eddie Van Halen circa 'Jump'). But instead of line dancing, they milled around the battered coach, guarding cheap red, white and blue striped plastic hessian bags loaded to bursting point with Marks and Spencers' undies and appliances from Woolworths.

Two of the girls - at least I think they were girls - passed the time practising a dance they had learned during their stay. It was an updated Charleston, done to an annoyingly catchy song called 'Doop'. They flapped their arms, shuffled their feet and waved their upturned palms with great vigour, moving aside only to let the conductress past as she dragged the bags full of contraband towards the open hatches on the side of the bus. Although the conductress was built like an East German swimmer (she had that slightly crazed look that comes from taking one too many growth hormones), she was struggling.

The coach spluttered to life, belching a cloud of black diesel smoke that hung ominously under the low roof of the coach station. The two Czech girls stayed outside long after the rest of us had boarded and busily continued to practise their dance steps. Eventually the conductress dragged them on board, a task that proved only marginally easier than manhandling the passengers' bags. We pulled out of Victoria Coach Station and inched our way through a cold, wet London night towards Vauxhall Bridge and Elephant & Castle, the girls continuing to practise in the aisle.

I was sad to be leaving London. I had spent close to a year there, and in many ways it felt like home. I had my favourite pub, the eccentric Prince of Wales near Clapham Common, where I would always find some startling new relic amongst the cluttered Steptoe and Son decor. I had my favourite cafe, the Northcote, where I seemed to spend every Sunday dining on greasy sausages, bacon and mushrooms and drinking from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles glass (spookily, always the one with Leonardo on it). I had even come to appreciate the vagaries of the English weather. But if I were to be totally honest, what I had come to enjoy most was the drunken, wasteful, doleful existence that is the Antipodean scene in London.

My first taste of this Antipodean lifestyle came during my very first weekend in Britain. Barely off the plane from Turkey, I was invited to an expat cocktail party. Now before you getting ideas about me hobnobbing it with London's Aussie cultural elite in the Groucho Club, let me just point out that it was a little get-together thrown by two Kiwis, Wayne and Stuart, and that it was held in their backyard in Clapham. What's more, their idea of class and sophistication amounted to covering the backyard with hay.

Wayne and Stuart both looked like New Zealanders. They had that constantly startled look that all Kiwis seem to have, a look not dissimilar to that of a possum caught in headlights or a sheep getting an unexpected surprise from a farmer in gum boots. They both worked for a water cooler company, lugging twenty-five litre casks of to offices all over London. They had stolen a number of water coolers for the party, and with the help of a number of their friends, emptied the huge plastic bottles of water and filled them instead with bulk versions of various cocktails. There was a Pina Colada cooler. There was a Margarita cooler and even a Black Russian cooler. Getting a cocktail was as easy as flipping back the toggle and filling your plastic cup.

I should point out right here and now that I am a very cheap drunk and that I have a penchant for sweet milky drinks. So when I found the Black Russian cooler, it was not a good thing. I knocked back four plastic cups full in a row and was ready to take on the world.

I guess I should also explain what my version of taking on the world involves. On this particular night, it meant linking arms with a dozen or so other similarly inebriated Antipodeans and dancing in a circle while trying to introduce ourselves to each other in time with 'Counting the Beat' by the Swingers. 'I'm Kylie' two three four five 'And I'm Sharon' two three four five 'And I'm ... ummm ... oh I forget' two three four five Surprisingly, it was a lot of fun, or seemed to be at the time. But then I got something stuck on the sole of my boots.

I thought it was a stone and tried to flick it out with my finger while continuing to dance in a circle. It turned out to be a piece of glass from a broken bottle and I sliced open my finger. While it took me a few minutes to comprehend what had happened, a couple of girls, Kylie and her friend Sam, were more on the ball, and immediately took me up to the kitchen. After ferreting around in the fridge for a while, they found a piece of frozen chicken and applied it to the wound. They insisted that it would help stop the flow of blood, especially if I stood with my hand, and the frozen chicken, on my head.

It's amazing what an open wound will do-as long as it's not too horrific-for the maternal instincts. It wasn't long before I was surrounded by a gaggle of attractive but admittedly very drunk women clucking and fussing over me. Periodically one of them would take my hand off my head and check the wound under the tea towel, then carefully and tenderly replace my hand and the piece of chicken on top of my head. Back home, if I'd offered to buy them a drink or asked them to dance, these same girls would have told me to piss off. I think it was there and then that I decided I loved London.

Of course, it couldn't-and didn't-last. Just as Kylie was asking me if I would like her to keep an eye on my finger throughout the night, Tracy turned up. I had met Tracy in Africa a couple of years earlier, and it was thanks to her that I was at the party in the first place. She was a good friend but, unfortunately, she was also a nurse. She took one look at my finger, applied a band-aid from her purse and told me to stop being silly. Kylie was crestfallen. Her task gone, her duties over, she wandered back into the party. I went and passed out beside a bale of hay.

That party was pretty indicative of the Antipodean scene in London. Every night someone was having a party or there was a backpacker pub offering a pint for a pound. If you were really hard pressed, there was always an Australian band to see. (It was fun to think that they thought they had cracked it big time in the UK when in reality they were just playing to a gaggle of homesick yobbos.) Here's a scary fact. The British music magazine Q did a survey on the most requested songs on jukeboxes in London pubs and discovered that 'Khe Sanh' by Cold Chisel was the most popular by far. That's pretty unsettling considering that a) your average Brit thinks that a Cold Chisel is something you use to remove a stubborn piece of concrete, b) the English never fought in Vietnam and c) the song was never released as a single in the UK.

I spent my last Sunday in London as I did my first, getting drunk with my compatriots. This time I ventured to the true heart of Antipodean London, an abandoned warehouse behind Kings Cross Station called The Church. It was called The Church because the only time it opened was between 11 am and 3 pm on Sundays, but it was also a place where miraculous feats of alcoholic consumption occurred. I had heard about it in the furthest corners of Turkey and every week I had lived in London. But I had never been there.

The Church was worth visiting for the location alone. I wandered past lock-ups that looked like something that Arthur (out of 'Minder') would keep his dodgy gear in. And I passed the sort of guys that looked like the type Arthur was always having a run in with. Right down the back of the complex, beside a smelly canal, I came upon a rather dilapidated warehouse. There was a line of people outside, looking as if they were queuing up to get into a soup kitchen.

Inside, the floor was covered in sawdust and Church Wardens (they wore green T-shirts proclaiming their identity) sold six-packs of Victoria Bitter from plastic garbage bins packed with ice. Fifteen hundred sozzled backpackers stood beer gut to beer gut with each other and the odd British film crew keen to capture some Aussie youngster falling stylelessly into his own vomit.

The DJ, well aware of the dancing limitations of his audience, sensibly restricted himself to playing songs with moronic chants and a head-nodding beat. That way the average Aussie male could nod and sing along, his arms folded across his chest, a cold beer in one hand. Stuff like Simple Minds' 'Don't You Forget About Me', with the chorus 'hey, hey, hey, hey, oooohhh yeah!' or 'Walk Like an Egyptian'-'way-oh, way-oh, way ay ay ay-oh' or 'Working Class Man' by Barnsey-'woah oh oh he's a working class man'. Joan Jett's 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll' and Queen's 'We Will Rock You' also went down a treat, proving that the regulars weren't averse to a little bit of gratuitous riffing either.

For one of the faithful, a chubby girl wearing a floral dress and a brightly coloured sweater, it all proved too much. I had been a touch wary of her for a while; her eyes had gone a little glassy and she was shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. With a slurred yelp she threw her hands in the air and collapsed onto the floor, quickly assuming a crucifix position. A quick-thinking Warden rushed to her aid and, cradling her head in his arms, poured a little Victoria Bitter into her mouth. Revived, the girl got to her feet, a little unsteady at first, and shook the sawdust from her fleece.

'Awlright!' she slurred, holding her arms up weakly in triumph.

'Awlright!' she continued, this time with a little jig.

'Awlr ... ii ... urgh ... urgh.' She fell to the floor again, this time throwing up on my shoe.

I was singing along to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' at the time, so I didn't really notice.

* * * * *

That had been only the day before. I was barely 15 minutes into my grand journey and I was already getting all misty-eyed and nostalgic. Luckily, my head hit the headrest of the seat in front of me and I was brought back to reality with a thud. The bus had run up the back of a Morris Metro on the roundabout at Elephant & Castle. And there, sprinting across three lanes of London peak hour traffic in the rain to get away, was Eddie the bus driver.

The Czechs were nonplussed. They sat and chatted as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Which, in Prague, it probably was. The two girls got up and started practising the Doop again, moving aside momentarily when a policeman got on the bus looking for the driver. Back outside, the driver of the Metro gesticulated wildly at the conductress and the policeman, and then at the rest of us on the bus looking out at what was happening. The whole incident was eventually resolved when the hormone-enhanced conductress started unbuttoning her blouse. Both the driver and the policeman couldn't get away quickly enough.

With Eddie gone, it fell upon the broad shoulders of the conductress to get us safely to Prague. She settled behind the wheel-a little wet from the rain, but thankfully with her blouse re-buttoned-and inched tentatively back into the traffic. At first she was painfully cautious, but soon she got into the swing of things-running red lights, changing lanes without indicating, and mounting the occasional kerb. The only indication of what had happened was the piece of bumper that sat in the aisle beside her. Soon we were in Dover.

I remembered Dover from my first trip to the UK as a smallish seaside village with whitewashed houses and an impressive medieval castle on a cliff overlooking the channel. It was too dark to see all that this time, and besides, we by-passed it all anyway. My overwhelming memory of Dover this time was of a huge expanse of asphalt, floodlights that turned night into day and a bank of tollbooths that stretched as far as the eye could see. We joined a queue of other coaches-all much shinier and more luxurious than ours-and waited patiently for a ferry. Fifteen of P&O's finest departed before we were finally allowed to board one.

Our ferry, however, turned out to be rather like an aged luxury liner. There were rooms with tatty airline-style chairs. Kiddies' rooms with Lego and Disney posters. Cafeterias. And bars. There were duty-free stores, and even though it was well past 11 pm, they were packed, mainly with the Czechs from my bus.

I've always had an aversion to duty-free stores. They all seem to stock the same things-watches, perfume, cigarettes and alcohol-and at prices that seem to be an approximation of what the items will be selling for in the next century. I ended up following the Czechs anyway, partly to see what they would buy, but largely out of boredom.

The Czechs, and just about every other passenger on the ferry, judging by the crush at the till, chose the store that specialised in cigarettes and alcohol. Whereas a lot of the other duty-free stores on the ferry had gone for an up-market retail ambience, this establishment had all the charm and decorum of a discount cash and carry. Every imaginable brand of cigarettes and alcohol was stacked fifty deep and a metre high on shelves that looked as if they were made out of oversized Meccano pieces. Pimply youths in unflattering sky blue uniforms circled with trolleys of new stock, ready to replenish the shelves-stuff was disappearing at an alarming rate.

While I have never been impressed by the pricing at duty-free shops, the Czechs certainly seemed to be. They darted around the aisles, peering at prices and shaking their heads in disbelief. Then they called out to their friends on the other side of the store, beckoning them to come and check the prices. On having the price confirmed-preferably by two or three friends-they would grab a carton or two each and head for the till.

By the time we drove off the ferry on the other side of the Channel, at Calais, the inside of the bus had taken on the appearance of a Customs and Excise warehouse. The aisle was a solid wall of cigarette cartons and the overhead racks were stuffed with loose packets of cigarettes and clanking bottles of scotch and vodka. The Czechs sat obscured behind the pile of contraband on their laps, muffling their conversation and softening the impact of the inevitable collision. Even the driver had a stash of Marlboro and bottles of Stoli on top of her chunky thighs. The two Doop girls were trapped behind extra cartons of cigarettes that their parents had bought, frantic and restless at being unable to practise.

As the bus picked its way through the vast car park, with the driver juggling the bottles of Stoli and peering over a mountain of cigarettes on her lap, I got my passport out of my bag. Ever since Australia protested a little too loudly over the massacre of some Kanak rebels in New Caledonia a decade or so ago, the French have insisted that we need a visa to visit their country. The fact that I wasn't strictly visiting, but merely passing through, didn't seem to matter. I had to shell out £7 for the privilege of sitting on a bus for two hours as it travelled through their country.

Even getting my passport out made my blood boil, so when the bus stopped and I was forced to get out of my seat and visit immigration, I was determined to haughtily throw my passport to the desk in mute protest at the injustice of it all. It would have to be mute because I didn't know any appropriate French. Somehow, the only French I had managed to pick up in West Africa-une chambre, petit prix (one room, small price)-didn't seem to capture the anger I was feeling inside.

I needn't have worked myself up, though. I watched out the window as we left the oversized car park and went through the tollbooth. I watched as we travelled along a purpose-built approach road and finally around a roundabout and onto a French autoroute. And when we crossed into Belgium an hour or so later, my worst fears were confirmed. I had wasted £7. The bastards didn't even check.

With the ferry crossing over-and the possibility of being dragged off to have my passport checked by some gnarly French gendarme now well and truly passed-I decided to try and get some sleep. I was rather taken by the idea that while I slept, in the few hours left before dawn, the bus would travel through several countries and through more languages and dialects. It would sweep by the bland Belgians, pass momentarily the gruff Dutch and then speed through the industrious Germans. Back home, a similar bus journey would only get you from one sleepy small town to the next.

There was one small problem with my plan. The guy sitting next to me insisted on leaving his reading light on. I had christened him 'Ivanhoe' after the beat up Everyman edition of Sir Walter Scott's classic he was making quite a show of reading. He had a foppish Hugh Grant hairstyle and wore a turtleneck sweater and spent most of the time staring out of the window. At first I thought he was trying to catch a glimpse of the passing countryside-perhaps even contemplating the lives of those we passed, asleep in their quaint European cottages and neat city squares. Then I realised that the reading light made looking out the windows impossible. He was simply studying his own reflection.

When the sun weakly struggled through a leaden grey sky we were on an autobahn somewhere just out of Frankfurt. Gleaming BMWs and Mercedes hurtled by at breakneck speeds. So did the occasional Porsche. A convoy of trucks carrying tanks and armoured personnel carriers also overtook us. I wondered momentarily where they were going, as Germany was a neutral country. Were they heading down to the former Yugoslavia-maybe to Croatia, with whom the Germans seem particularly chummy-or were they heading to the recently absorbed East? Ivanhoe didn't seem to know any more about this than I did, but insisted that if they were heading to the Czech Republic they were in for a fight.

'The Czech Republic is a country ready for war,' he proclaimed knowledgeably. 'They have spent decades preparing for it, expecting it to come.'

Then, after checking to see if anyone was listening, he motioned me closer.

'Each apartment block,' he whispered, 'has been placed strategically so that in the case of invasion they could be knocked over and used as road blocks. That's why you should never take a room on the top floor.'

Ivanhoe had been teaching English in Prague for over 18 months and was returning there after a short break visiting his parents in Suffolk. He had adopted the bohemian ways of his new home a little too earnestly, so I nodded solemnly and pretended to make a mental note of his advice. If I had openly mocked him he may have become violent and, besides, Ivanhoe lived in Prague. He might yet prove to be useful.

Around 10 am the bus pulled off the autobahn and into one of those ubiquitous roadside petrol stations. Architecturally, aesthetically, it was no different from the same structures that lie beside the motorways in England and the freeways in Australia.

Well, no different from the outside, at least. Upon entering this monstrosity and inquiring after the price of a rather tired-looking sandwich and a can of Coke, I realised just why it was that I was bussing through Western Europe rather than taking a leisurely ramble through it. Those two items alone-let alone any subsequent costs, like accommodation and transport-would have eaten up a week or so of my budget. I went back to the bus hungry and watched a light snow fall on the trucks and coaches and crisp family sedans in the car park. I wasn't alone. The entire Czech contingent hadn't bought anything from the diner either. But at least they had been sensible enough to bring packed lunches.

About 80 kilometres from the Czech-German border, the autobahn gave way to a single road that wound its way rather circuitously through neat farmland and forests. Occasionally we slowed to pass through small villages lightly dusted with snow. The villages looked like something out of a Hans Christian Andersen story, with all the houses clustered around a town square, and each town square with a tower, a clock and a terracotta-coloured church topped by an onion-shaped dome. For the first time on the trip I felt as though I had reached Eastern Europe. It also changed my perception of my fellow passengers. All of a sudden they didn't seem so out of place.

Just after lunchtime we reached the border at Pozvadov. As far as borders go, it was a little disappointing. I had been expecting something right out of the Cold War, with towers and searchlights and barbed wire fences and Alsatians patrolling the perimeter ready to savage any Czech silly enough to make a dash for the West. Instead, there was a barrier and a group of bored-looking soldiers standing around rubbing their hands together and trying to stay warm.

A burly guard wearing one of those furry Russian hats came onto the bus and disconsolately looked at everyone's passports. When he saw that I was an Australian he tutted disapprovingly and took my passport from me. I was fearful that there had been some diplomatic incident overnight, but Ivanhoe indicated it was something more serious.

'Well now you've done it. He only had to look at ours. The poor fellow actually has to go and do something with yours. I shouldn't try and upset him any more. I just hope your visa is in order.'

It was. It had cost me £13 in London and was good for a stay of up to 30 days. A few minutes later the guard got back onto the bus, tossed my passport to me from near the front door, then got off.

'My, that was quick!' said Ivanhoe, genuinely impressed. 'The computer must be working again. When I went to London a month ago it was down, and truck drivers had to wait three days to pass through the border. One even died waiting. The cold, you see.'

The conductress shifted the bus into gear and we headed off into the Czech countryside. I was excited to have a new stamp in my passport and busily flicked through the pages to find it. I have always loved visas. They always have a story to tell about the country they come from, and this one didn't disappoint. It had Pozvadov, the date and, best of all, a little car to indicate that I had entered by road. Ivanhoe thought the car looked like the one from Monopoly, but with the tyre on the outside of the boot, I felt it looked more like a Nazi staff car from 'Hogan's Heroes'.

Almost immediately, the road deteriorated even more, into a single lane road barely wide enough for the bus, let alone any traffic foolish enough to be heading in the opposite direction. It wound its way higher into the hills, where the forests were thicker and the snow heavier. When we did come across farms, they were unkempt and dishevelled, many appearing to be abandoned. Ancient rusting electricity pylons lined the road. I was immediately struck by the fact that there were no fences. Ivanhoe said it was a legacy of Communism, which discouraged them because they implied ownership. Personally, I think it was because they couldn't afford them.

That was certainly confirmed at our first stop after the border-a disintegrating restaurant rather sadly decked out as a Wild West cantina. The solid pine interior and the recurring logo of a rearing horse suggested that once, a long time ago, probably during the first flushes of freedom, someone had at least thought of spending a bit of money to spruce the place up. Now it just doled out stew to passing buses and beer to a few dishevelled regulars propping up the bar, where the varnish was already beginning to fade. The Doop girls, glad to be free of the confines of the bus, persuaded the owner to put on their tape and got in a few more minutes of practice. And all around, in the restaurant, outside in the car park and even the bus, was the smell of the smoke of brown coal.

The poor condition of the road meant that we would spend the rest of the afternoon travelling the 130 kilometres to Prague. We skirted Plzen, only catching a glimpse of the factories that surround it. During both World Wars it had been a huge centre for armaments-in fact, it was second in size only to Krupps in Germany. It was also the birthplace of bottom-fermented beer, named 'Pilsener' after the town, and made from premium Zatec hops and the soft local water. I asked Ivanhoe if the buildings we were passing were the breweries.

'No. They're closer to the town centre. See that logo?' he asked, pointing to the chimneystack of a particularly ugly industrial complex. 'It's the same as on a Skoda. It's the Skoda Engineering Works.'

'So that's where they make Skodas,' I said, trying to appear knowledgeable.

'No. That side of the business got sold to Volkswagen,' Ivanhoe corrected me. 'That's where they make all the nuclear reactors for the old Soviet Bloc.'

It was a sobering thought. The same standards of engineering excellence that went into your average Skoda car were applied to your average Warsaw Pact reactor. No wonder Chernobyl started making its way to the centre of the Earth.

'Do you know any Skoda jokes?' I asked Ivanhoe, trying to change the subject. 'They're quite funny. Look, there's a few in my guidebook. What's the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and a Skoda? You can close the door on a Jehovah's Witness! Ha, ha.'

Ivanhoe smiled weakly. Taking this as a sign of encouragement, I continued.

'Why do they put rear window demisters on Skodas? To keep your hands warm while you're pushing them! Ha, ha. How do you double the value of your Skoda? Fill it up with petrol! Ha, ha. What do you call a convertible ...'

'Please,' interrupted Ivanhoe. 'I drive a Skoda. And really, they're not that bad. Now if you don't mind, I'd rather like to finish my book.'

The 90 kilometres to Prague passed in an uncomfortable silence. Which was fine by me.