A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

Product Information

The starting point is super interesting with a Brit going to Poland at Brexit times, forming his own opinion on Poland and trying to live a real polish life. 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’. Towards the end of his stay in Poland, Aitken stayed with some nuns in Staniątki, near Kraków. He also gets lost in freezing conditions in the Polish mountains – without much daylight to spare. Finally, nothing beats milking Polish cows, as Aitken did in Ełk, north-east Poland.

Aitken’s unabashed nature meant that he could partake in cultural immersion in Poland on a grand scale. There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.” I decided to move to Poland out of curiosity and boredom. Since the country joined the EU in 2004, about a million Poles have settled in Britain. I wanted to know what they were leaving behind. I was also tired of home. I wanted to uproot and replant myself. Moving to a former member of the communist bloc isn’t the only way to deal with a case of itchy feet, of course. But this was March 2016 and a referendum was in the diary, and so I thought I’d take advantage of my European mobility while I still had any, thought I’d exercise my freedom to move and work and love and learn in 20-odd countries before it was irrevocably lost. In 2016 Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. He flew to a place he'd never heard of and then accepted a job in a chip shop on the minimum wage.I turned to the pair and got some small talk going, probably about how crap the weather in London had been. I learned that the boy had lived in England all his life, while his father had lived in England for a quarter of his. It was obvious that the boy loved football. He was wearing goalie gloves and shin pads in an airport, for heaven’s sake. Unfortunately, the content of the book is what I had the biggest problem with. To preface this section, I would like to make it clear that the blurb claims many things about the book which I find to be slightly deceptive. I believe in this case that it is the publisher who is more at fault, so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt, in case it was tainted by false promises. One such promise is the quote on the front cover that claims this is 'One of the funniest books of the year'. It's perfectly fine for a memoir to not be funny and, for what it's worth, there were even a few funny moments. However, and I say this knowing humour is subjective, the contents of this book do not seem like they were designed to be funny. Traces of insight were also promised, but making vague statements and then alluding to some deeper meaning is not insightful, at least not to me. In fact, several of the promised elements of the book come in the last quarter, with little of the earlier content featuring on the advertisement. This may have to do with how the author comes across in the first half of the book...

Theresa May tells Polish people they are ‘welcome’ in UK – despite her routinely tough rhetoric on EU migration Food is at the heart of everything in a culture and Aitken respected that in Poland. When he wrote about his plans to make bigos , commonly known as “hunter’s stew”, I almost felt jealous. Not because I’m a stewy kind of guy, but rather because I’ve never really attempted to make any signature Polish dishes myself. I do wonder – have I immersed myself enough in Polish culture? I’ve been to lots of places. I’ve blessed food on Holy Saturday. However, I haven’t got too much to say about Polish food. The only consolation is – I love Gołąbki . These are cabbage leaves stuffed with spiced minced meat and rice. Reading takes you places. Where in the world will your next book take you? If you love world literature, translated works, travel writing, or explorin Reading takes you places. Where in the world will your next book take you? If you love world literature, translated works, travel writing, or exploring the world through books, you have come to the right place! ATW80 began in 2009 as a challenge on TNBBC. The separate group was established in 2011. But there is far more to the book than fish and chips. Ben has a brief spell in the improbably-named ‘Cream Tea School Of English’, a school for young Poles ‘whose parents want their children to leave the country as soon as possible’. Ben’s bumbling attempts at class control are touchingly comic; ‘I won’t name names’, he says, ‘but Lucas is almost certainly related to the devil. Olivia, on the other hand is devilish one moment and angelic the next … You can put Lucas in the cupboard and be done with it. But you can’t put Olivia in the cupboard and be done with it because she’ll turn into an angel in that cupboard and start to sob and bleat like a gorgeous cherub in the unfair dark.’Another thing that made the prospect of moving to Poland attractive was that whenever I mooted the idea, people generally laughed or frowned. If I’d said France or Spain, or Denmark or Italy, nobody would have questioned my intent, because the common sense has these countries down as desirable locations. As respectfully as possible, I hold common sense in contempt. In my experience, things that are commonly frowned upon or disparaged or unsung tend to be immensely pleasurable. Sunderland and microwave meals are cases in point. I hoped that Poland would be another. The author’s “few do it, so I’ll do it” attitude shines through in A Chip in Poznań . This was the case with Aitken’s jaunt to Katowice. Generally, the city is “held to be ugly and disappointing”. Indeed, Katowice is not a tourist magnet, not really a place to rival magic Kraków just down the A4 motorway. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” - Dr. Suess He intended to find out why so many Poles have been moving to the UK in recent years and what they were leaving behind. Taking a minimum wage job in a fish and chip shop, Aitken embedded himself in the ordinary lives of Polish people and gained surprising insights into their cultural traditions, social mores and political views.