A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

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When it comes to meeting Jędrzej, a friend of Aitken’s employers at the language school he agreed to work for, we once again see the author’s humorous take on the Polish language shine through: “What a queer set of letters. This book is very much like the stereotypes of the English abroad and I did cringe quite a bit reading it. Unfortunately Ben would be the first to admit that his work ethic and time keeping makes the balance a little uneven. Adeptly balances personal ruminations on love, attraction, and friendship, with cultural evaluations that subvert British stereotypes of Polish citizens [. There is a tradition that an extra place is set at the Christmas Eve dinner for needy strangers, although no one knew of an occasion when someone actually turned up.

Writing any book is a challenge, but in my opinion, writing a non-fiction book is even more difficult; especially a memoir, where you are effectively the main character and therefore directly the subject for any criticism. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. By the year's end he had a better sense of what the Poles had turned their backs on - southern mountains, northern beaches, dumplings! This, along with more extreme examples (bringing beer into a nunnery, trespassing into conferences, and using his friend's favourite things as ashtrays), paints the author in a bad light no matter how fondly you look upon him.As Aitken pointed out: “Not only must I learn new letters – e and a and o and s and c have alternatives that are accessorised with tails and fringes – but I must also contend with familiar letters arranged in new ways, with the result that when one finds oneself in front of a door, and is invited to pchać , one doesn’t know whether to push or pull. Indeed, Katowice is not a tourist magnet, not really a place to rival magic Kraków just down the A4 motorway. Such an attitude explains why he didn’t read up on Katowice’s socio-economic situation in advance of going there.

He seems to like Poland in the whole, but it doesn’t seem to change him much, which if he had, I would have found more interesting. However, the politics in this book are lazy and uninspired; they are exactly the same opinions that millions of others repeat without thinking.The things he encounters and endeavors he undertakes (the Christmas dinner) are interesting and could be at times hilarious. Images previously embedded in my head of a grey and gloomy Poland were wiped out and replaced with colour, humour, a little suspense and a bit of an education, moving it higher up my list of ‘places to visit before I die’. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.