A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

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So how should he expect us to take his opinion seriously when he does not even take it seriously enough himself?

I have read many reviews which complain about the author and his personality, whilst others seem to not mind. I don't see why it was necessary for the author to spend so much time detailing his smoking and drinking habits or describing his daily hangovers with such vividity. Adeptly balances personal ruminations on love, attraction, and friendship, with cultural evaluations that subvert British stereotypes of Polish citizens […] 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.An enjoyable book about an Englishman moving to the land of my birth, which made me laugh out loud at times. Ben Aitken is definitely great at chopping potatoes but he's even better at slicing apart and serving a surprising mixture of stories from the country at the "heart of Europe". To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. i have bought the book sold on the seemingly interesting concept of ‘reverse migration’ of a brit to poland, however this entire book has just screamed ‘privilege’ to me.

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. Certainly, with my first journey to Polandand getting used to a wholly new culture, I sought to find myself – to have my character reset. A fascinating book […] We should know more than we do about Poland, a nation with which we have had centuries of interaction. I wasn't surprised to see the mixed opinions; I myself found some of the book's content questionable and expected there might be others who agreed with me. 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.

Such an attitude explains why he didn’t read up on Katowice’s socio-economic situation in advance of going there. Traditionally, Poles prepare an extra chair and plate at the table in case an unexpected visitor turns up. 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.

Surely the word [Jędrzej] is an expletive or imprecation, the noise Poles make when something goes wrong. Since the idea of the book is nice and the things that happen interesting I would recommend reading this book, however one chapter at a time, and some other things in between. His recounts of existentialism and general "what is my purpose in life" puncture the novel in an unexpectedly touching way. For some months, he did not seem to be doing any paid work, but continued travelling around a lot: to Lodz; to Lublin; to Jelenia Gora, in the south-western corner of Poland; to Konin; to Krakow, where he rented a guest room in a nunnery and where he visits the salt mine.In February 2017 he was offered a job on a farm in Elk, in the north-east, milking cows and cleaning their sheds, but doesn’t take it.