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.

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. I learnt that, on average, Poles would sooner fall to their knees and take a blow to the head than hear a bad word said about pierogi.

This novel seems to be more cathartic for the author than anything else. His recounts of existentialism and general "what is my purpose in life" puncture the novel in an unexpectedly touching way. And whilst I appreciate the glimpses of Poland that we get (a whole tour around the country), unfortunately, the meandering and low-key first world problem experiences described in the novel didn't provide the indepth look into what living in Poland is really like, that I wanted. The things he encounters and endeavors he undertakes (the Christmas dinner) are interesting and could be at times hilarious. 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. I booked the cheapest flight to a place I’d never heard of – Poznan. When my mum urged me to be cautious and just go for the weekend, I shamelessly – and pompously – quoted Ezra Pound, who said that a glance is the enemy of vision, that a glance wouldn’t do, that if you’re going to go you ought to go properly. Why Poznan in Poland? Why not? Peeling potatoes and exploring the country

Playing with the conventions of the life writing genre, Aitken undermines seemingly trivial or innocuous observations with humorous footnotes. There’s a refreshing honesty about his own fallibility as a chronicler of his and others’ experiences. After all, he admits to knowing almost nothing about Poland before he sets off there. But as he learns more through his travels so too does the reader, who becomes a mutual beneficiary of his newfound knowledge. I can note several similarities between myself and the author. For example, we are close in age (I am a few years younger); we are from similar parts of the United Kingdom; and we have both experienced the 'reverse immigration' that is the focus of this book (I moved to Warsaw in 2020 for work). I feel that this gives me a unique position to offer my opinion on this work. Pitched somewhere between a travelogue and a memoir, A Chip Shop in Poznań adeptly balances personal ruminations on love, attraction, and friendship, with cultural evaluations that subvert British stereotypes of Polish citizens. One of Aitken’s most successful strategies is to highlight similarities over differences: ‘What do the Polish do at the seaside?’ he asks. ‘They stroll and play and read and build castles from sand, as others elsewhere’.WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM. On to the narration which is no fault of the author, it was generally monotonous but better than if the Author had read it like in his previous books. I also learnt that the more we move, the more our affection spreads. This may sound like a platitude, but to me it’s true. About halfway through my stay in Poland I met a young boy at Poznan airport. I had been in England for a wedding and was queuing to be readmitted to my new home. Ben made friends, learnt about Poland and saw how travel can make us more affectionate (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty) ‘The more we move, the more our affection spreads’

The main purpose of this group is to travel the world through books, experiencing new authors and cultures along the way. Want to read about the world? We have close to 50,000 books cataloged by setting and more are added each week. Ben’s journey to discover the relationship between Poland and Britain and why so many Poles were leaving home, which just happened to be during the year of the referendum, was so colourful and witty that I literally couldn’t wait to meet the next chapter. After a recent phase of reading about the holocaust and the Polish people’s dark and troubled past, I was ready to introduce a lighter period of literature into my life and the ‘Chip Shop in Poznan’ was right up my street and a good segway into a glimpse of post war, post-communist Poland. 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. Ben Aitken won me over with his unabashed nature and affinity for cultural immersion. Let’s dive in to see what Ben got up to in Poznań and Poland. So why Poland? And why Poznań?Writing is an attempt to be less dead,’ says Ben Aitken in his entertaining travelogue, A Chip Shop In Poznan: My Unlikely Year In Poland. His writing – as much as his lived experience – succeeds admirably in the attempt.

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.’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’ve written a few posts on this blog which detail my early days in Poland. Reflecting on those times, I fully understood where Aitken was coming from with his comments about growing tired with life in the UK and the “nice routines” there. Certainly, with my first journey to Polandand getting used to a wholly new culture, I sought to find myself – to have my character reset. Overall, it’s an effortless task to empathise with Aitken, especially when you’ve been in his shoes. Sometimes I felt like I was reading my own memoir. Then we get onto the issue of politics in this book. The referendum to leave the EU is featured heavily in the book and on the blurb. 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. However, the politics in this book are lazy and uninspired; they are exactly the same opinions that millions of others repeat without thinking. The moments where politics come out seem completely out of place and incredibly preachy. The most uncomfortable aspect of this however, comes from the fact that the author admits to not taking part in the referendum. So how should he expect us to take his opinion seriously when he does not even take it seriously enough himself? (Strangely, one of the funniest scenes features the author giving a tedious political monologue to someone who leaves before he can finish)