A Chip Shop in Poznan by Ben Aitken - Non Fiction - Paperback Travel Memoir

Details. Condition: New. Format: Paperback. ISBN: 9781785786266. Publisher: Icon Books. Age Range: Adult readersOverview. A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland is Ben Aitken's candid, funny travel memoir about swapping Britain for a minimum-wage job in a Polish chip shop. Curious about what Polish migrants had left behind, Aitken flew to a city he barely knew and spent a year peeling potatoes, riding buses, and quietly falling for a country most travel writers overlook. The result is a warm, witty portrait of modern Poland told through unglamorous, ground-level experience rather than tourist cliché, ideal for readers who enjoy honest, humour-laced non-fiction.About the Book. In 2016, long before Brexit forced the question of who belongs where, Ben Aitken decided to find out for himself what Polish emigrants to the UK had actually left behind. Rather than researching from an armchair, he bought a one-way ticket to Poznan, a city he confesses he'd barely heard of, and took a job in a fish and chip shop on the minimum wage. What follows is a memoir built from the ground up: shifts behind the fryer, bus journeys to small towns, conversations with nuns, football fans, and everyday Poles, all filtered through Aitken's self-deprecating, observational humour. The book resists the usual travel-writing tropes of grand landmarks and neat conclusions, instead finding insight in laundrettes, milk bars, and the quiet dignity of ordinary lives. Along the way, Aitken's curiosity about migration and belonging deepens into something more personal, and the year abroad reshapes his own sense of purpose, even nudging him toward an unlikely ambition to stand for the European Parliament. Praised by reviewers as one of the funniest travel books of its year, it combines proper reporting instincts with genuine warmth for a country too often ignored by British travel writers. It's a book about class, migration, and unfashionable places, told without condescension and with a great