A Chip Shop in Poznań: My Unlikely Year in Poland
By Ben Aitken
Published by Icon Books
Publication date: July 2019
ISBN: 978-1785785580
Order online
Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop.
Travel writer Ben Aitken moved to Poland in 2016 to understand why the Poles were leaving.
He booked the cheapest flight he could find, to a place he had never heard of – Poznan.
This candid, funny and offbeat book is the account of his year in Poland, as an unlikely immigrant.
Between peeling potatoes and boning fish, Ben spent time on the road travelling the country.
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 Solidarity rose and communism fell.
This is a bittersweet portrait of an unsung country, challenging stereotypes that Poland is a grey, ex-soviet land, and revealing a diverse country, rightfully proud of its colorful identity.