A Chip Shop in Poznań cover art

A Chip Shop in Poznań

My Unlikely Year in Poland

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

A Chip Shop in Poznań

By: Ben Aitken
Narrated by: Will M. Watt
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £21.99

Buy Now for £21.99

About this listen

"One of the funniest books of the year..." (Paul Ross, talkRADIO)

WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM.

Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop.

Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament.

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.

When he wasn’t peeling potatoes he was on the road scratching the country’s surface: He milked cows with a Eurosceptic farmer; missed the bus to Auschwitz; spent Christmas with complete strangers and went to Gdańsk to learn how communism got the chop. By the year’s end he had a better sense of what the Poles had turned their backs on - southern mountains, northern beaches, dumplings! - and an uncanny ability to bone cod.

This is a candid, funny and offbeat tale of a year as an unlikely immigrant.

©2019 Ben Aitken (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Europe Travel Writing & Commentary Funny United Kingdom

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Dear Bill Bryson cover art
The Gran Tour cover art
The Marmalade Diaries cover art
Here Comes the Fun cover art
Alan Partridge: Big Beacon cover art
How They Broke Britain cover art
The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People cover art
I Left My Tent in San Francisco cover art
One Man and His Bike cover art
The Abuse of Power cover art
Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey cover art
Around the World in 80 Trains cover art
Between the Stops cover art
The Tent, The Bucket and Me cover art
The Dark Tourist cover art
Getting Orlando cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Really engaging listen, funny, warm and above all interesting. Really well narrated by the author too.

Entertaining listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautifully narrated and fascinating story. Would definitely recommend it. I will also listen to it again.

Enjoyed every minute.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Poetic prose used to illuminate the mundane. Makes me fancy a trip to Poznaz. 😂

Excellent, unexpectedly brilliant.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Audio book listening, I'm no intellect, failure at reading so enjoy this lazy method, only returned from a mini break in Poznan so was intrigued when saw this, so much easier when you can relate to somewhere, me & Ben probably have different political views, which come across, but that's fine, I'm sure we could have a polite debate on this, many great parts, but the Xmas tradition of turning up unexpectedly, wow Mr Benjamin got bigger balls than me, I cringed with embarrassment, but was so impressed, great book, love this type of reading, thank you.

I love Poland

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
... about Poland. And works all the better for that. Aitken is a warm, intelligent and interesting story teller. It's not a Bill Bryson travel book (as I first thought), although there are echoes of that. Instead, Aitken has his own, less forced, more rhythmic style of writing. The narration is great too. Overall... one not to miss.

This is a book as much about life as it is...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews