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A Chip Shop in Poznań
- My Unlikely Year in Poland
- Narrated by: Will M. Watt
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Categories: Travel & Tourism, Travel Writing & Commentary
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Summary
"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.
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What listeners say about A Chip Shop in Poznań
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- tom aitken
- 12-11-19
Terrific
Couldn't put my ears down! Well read and well written. No technical issues with audible etc.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 24-01-20
I love Poland
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.
1 person found this helpful
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- SIMON
- 10-01-21
It just didn’t grab me
I really wanted to like this book, I almost gave up several times but preserved. There’s some excellent parts on what nationality really means and for me showed how far this country has sunk. But it just didn’t do it for me as something I’d want to recommend or talk about with friends.
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- Jan
- 11-08-20
Yikes
Whiny, un-original, navelgazing, ill- informed waste of the listener’s time. So sorry to have spent 3 hours before giving up.
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- Phil A.
- 05-05-20
This is a book as much about life as it is...
... 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.
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- Rossano Nocera
- 21-03-20
Entertaining listen
Really engaging listen, funny, warm and above all interesting. Really well narrated by the author too.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-11-19
top travel memoir
about Poland, life, adventure. some of the humour/irony lost on me but he's British. one for all ages i'd say, and not just those invested in Poland