A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

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One of the main problems I usually have with travel books is that they are commonly written by white males who can afford to put themselves in hilarious (unsafe) situations.

I have no issue with an author giving their political opinion and I suspect that the author and myself share the same opinions on many topics. The idea of heading to Poland to discover why the Poles were heading in the other direction was an inspiring motive. Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of charm to his self-deprecation and rudimentary approach to learning the basics of Polish.

And I also did not like his “preacher” persona when he talks about EU, racism and many other things. It completely baffles me how anyone, let alone the author, would let this stuff into the final version. 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 is Aitken – the ardent traveller who, in his own words, prefers to put travelling before travel writing. He missed the bus to Auschwitz; stayed with a dozen nuns near Krakow; was offered a job by a Eurosceptic farmer and went to Gdansk to learn how communism got the chop.

It's a great pleasure seeing your own country through the beady-eyes of an author who decided to leave a' comfort zone' to gain a true life experience. I particularly enjoyed Ben’s stint as an ESL teacher, having personally supported non English speaking students, I found his newly acquired skills and experiences familiar and hilarious! Aitken took his curiosity as the EU referendum approached to go and investigate Poland and why Polish people come to the UK, and to do so by living there for a year and doing minimum wage jobs.Not only does this romance come across as a bit shallow and one-sided, but it serves absolutely no purpose in the storyline and is left completely unresolved. Even though I fully agree with him on these points a book like this is not the platform to share your political views and other convictions (do not feed bread to the ducks people, do not! All topics are narrated with sensitivity, and Askitt is often able to take a step back and admit his ignorance on a topic or even to explain complex thoughts in a light and funny manner. Out of the entire book I found perhaps 30-45 minutes of it interesting, mostly centered on his showing up unannounced to have a Christmas Eve dinner with a family.

The most uncomfortable aspect of this however, comes from the fact that the author admits to not taking part in the referendum. This made it quite unmotivating to read as I wasn't particularly interested in the author's attempts to hike up a mountain in the dark Polish winter or failed romantic endeavours but more so the political and cultural environment. It's perfectly fine for a memoir to not be funny and, for what it's worth, there were even a few funny moments.literally going to a stranger's house in the middle of the night to have dinner, having a beer with a racist bigot to 'understand his perspective', sleeping on the sidewalk etc. 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. An engaging romp through Polish culture, with a resonant political message of the importance of interacting with other cultures and preserving our ties with Europe. The dutiful noting down in his diary of all these visits is doubtlessly of interest to him, but I found them uninteresting and unmemorable. A sincere, mischievious and hilariously funny journal of strange and absolutely normal encounters that made me wish to visit Poland, even though I'm Polish.

Aggravated by the author using the same type of style figures often; putting people on the wrong foot (when you over do that people start thinking you are arrogant too), struggling through some hardship. Ben Aitkin did his homework and was well-versed in historical facts but this is not a history book but one trying to figure out what made the locals as they were.Therefore, if you are interested in Poland and want to read the authors' memoirs of his time there, I would recommend you to give it a go. Poland has charming facets, strange quirks, and very alien customs (to me); but every day, I can find or learn something completely new. The premise is brilliant - do to the Eastern Europeans what they do to the Brits - come over legally and work hard at the jobs we don't want. When Poles ask the question, do they assume that Poland is such a dirt-poor country with zero opportunities? WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM.