An article for The Cambridge Language Collective
Forget a Chip Shop in Poznań, here's a snap from my trip to A Wedding in Opole
“What did I get you this year, Anna?”, my grandmother asks, referring to the book voucher she kindly gifted me, having given up long ago on guessing what niche book I might fancy.
“A Chip Shop in Poznań”, I reply.
“And at an excellent low price too”, my brother quips.
My grandmother gives me a puzzled look, and I explain that while opening European culinary establishments does seem an appealing career path, it is in fact the title of a light-hearted travelogue by Ben Aitken. Given my ongoing struggle to learn Polish, I thought that reading Aitken’s account of his unlikely year bumbling around Poznań might provide a welcome break from the rather outdated adventures of the characters in the textbook, who always seem to be asking for directions to internet cafés and the like.
A lot of books in the travel genre tend to follow a similar narrative and there were certainly enough comments about historic European battles and amusing run-ins with locals to fit this pattern. Aitken’s adventures around Poland took place in 2016, and so as one would expect, a commentary about the shock of the Brexit Referendum and Trump’s election runs parallel to his thoughts on pierogi dumplings (excellent) and Polish customer service (not so). Reading his ruminations about closed borders and shortages looking at the current pandemic-stricken state of the world is a little odd, yet it provides colour and depth to his snapshot of his time in Poland. On an attempt to find out for himself why so many Poles migrate to the UK for work – which he realises fairly quickly after receiving his wage from his shift at a chip shop – he travels around the country exploring the traditions and cities of Poland, and trying to find his feet in a language and culture which remain largely inaccessible and relatively obscure to the average Brit.
Aitken’s endeavours to assimilate into Polish culture are commendable, even if one is sometimes left with the impression that at times, he pushes it a bit far for the sake of a good story. Having spent the past year abroad myself however, I can confirm that there is something exhilarating about accepting outlandish propositions which you would never dream of undertaking in the UK. Like many a Brit, I’m sure Aitkens would apologise to anyone who was causing an inconvenience, yet he seems to have no qualms about gate-crashing a Polish family’s Wigilia – Christmas Eve - dinner. There is a Polish tradition to set an empty place for an unexpected guest – niespodziewany gość – at the dinner table, so that nobody may go without food and company at Christmas, but I think it’s understandable that the Polish family were baffled by, but nevertheless incredibly welcoming towards, their unexpected guest.
Indeed, the warm and hospitable spirit of the Polish is evident throughout the book, and my own experiences of being fed by generous Polish friends who have cooked industrial quantities of bigos – a sort of national meat stew – only reinforces this further.
Illustration Credits: Lily Lowe
One of the risks travel-writers run is that of reducing often quite complex traditions or relationships into a series of flippant remarks and jovial observations, which while they may lighten the tone, do not reflect the many historical or social nuances of the culture at hand. While Aitken’s decision to spend a year working in the country does lead to him avoiding such generalisations on the whole, there is still very much a sense that we are experiencing Poland through the eyes of one who, despite his best efforts, clearly remains an outsider.
Travel writing provides this mode of escapism; a way for the reader to temporarily drop into another culture and glean some interesting trivia, without diving headfirst into the history of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth or the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz – the traditional approach favoured by the Cambridge Tripos. Such travel books allow one an insight into towns off the beaten track unlikely to be explored in a quick weekend city-break and are sprinkled with enough foreign words to feel sufficiently cultural.
Travel writing should also encourage the reader in their own adventures, to allow them to imagine themselves in these wonderful places and situations, and the lack of representation in this genre has often niggled at my mind. While books such as A Chip Shop in Poznań are enjoyable and worthy reads, there is very little I have in common with the narrator, which often leads to a sense of detachment – of being the observer of the observer. I often wonder whether it is worth reading yet another account of what sometimes turns into a British man’s lark around European pubs with a couple of cultural comments thrown in, and I am always keen to hear of recommendations of travel writing by female authors, and especially those from a non-White British background.
But as COVID-related travel restrictions close up borders once more, I am left in the library to decipher the intimidating consonant clusters in my Polish textbook and dream about steaming vats of bigos and a summer hiking trip in the Tatra Mountains. Reaching for a light-hearted piece of travel writing, for all its shortcomings, suddenly seems like a justifiable coping strategy and substitute for the real Polish experience, which once again, will have to wait just a little bit longer.