A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland

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It showed me Poland from a completely different angle, one which I hope to experience for myself one day. If you have a self-defeatist mindset when it comes to learning obscure looking languages, you’re on a hiding to nothing before lesson one commences. 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. In January 2005, I met a Polish exchange student whilst studying at The Nottingham Trent University, UK.

However, I think whether you enjoy this book or not depends on whether you like the author and his style of writing. The younger students, aged between eight and ten, already spoke much more English than he did Polish, despised him and were unruly. 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. Many Poles do speak English, but some of the English dialogues between Ben and Polea strike me as being too sophisticated to be either uttered or understood by the Poles. He visited Katowice, Gdansk and Wroclaw from where he took a bus to Auschwitz, which moved him greatly.The concept seemed interesting and I found the beginning of the book amusing, especially the chapter on teaching English to Polish students. 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. His recounts of existentialism and general "what is my purpose in life" puncture the novel in an unexpectedly touching way. 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.

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. There are many footnotes, some explaining historical references, others amusing extensions of the main text. The book is presented in diary format, though the text has clearly been polished so that it reads well, and it's easy to gauge your progress through his year just by looking at each date stamp. There was an altercation in the beginning and throughout the novel about Islamaphobia yet the author never seems to recognise how much he is able to get away with. Eerily, so many of Aitken’s observations and experiences brought back memories of my early days in Poland.

However, and I say this knowing humour is subjective, the contents of this book do not seem like they were designed to be funny. I don’t want to be rude about this book, because I am not convinced that the author is really ok, and someone should probably check in on him.