But, among the thoughts he recounts when he leaves Poland in April 2017 is this one: “When I am in Poland, I could be anywhere”, which sums up the feeling I had that he had not noted all that much that made that country different from others.

I particularly enjoyed Ben’s stint as an ESL teacher, having personally supported non English speaking students, I found his newly acquired skills and experiences familiar and hilarious! It completely baffles me how anyone, let alone the author, would let this stuff into the final version.There are also times when reading this you wonder should Ben be left leave the country considering the daft and dangerous situations he manages to find himself in. Images previously embedded in my head of a grey and gloomy Poland were wiped out and replaced with colour, humour, a little suspense and a bit of an education, moving it higher up my list of ‘places to visit before I die’. I don't see why it was necessary for the author to spend so much time detailing his smoking and drinking habits or describing his daily hangovers with such vividity. also, being polish myself, some facts and translations were not correct and i found it weirdly frustrating - was it that hard to double or triple check with one or two of the 700k poles living in the uk during the edit? There is something exciting yet comforting in being somewhere new, being lost on a new map, finding a supermarket or a bus stop.

Most of this travelogue is set in Poznan, a fabulous city I adore and have been to many times, the rest of the book reports from various places in Poland. When it comes to meeting Jędrzej, a friend of Aitken’s employers at the language school he agreed to work for, we once again see the author’s humorous take on the Polish language shine through: “What a queer set of letters. And I also did not like his “preacher” persona when he talks about EU, racism and many other things. Adeptly balances personal ruminations on love, attraction, and friendship, with cultural evaluations that subvert British stereotypes of Polish citizens […] An engaging romp through Polish culture, with a resonant political message of the importance of interacting with other cultures and preserving our ties with Europe. It showed me Poland from a completely different angle, one which I hope to experience for myself one day.I wasn't so keen on the chapter titles; each one is taken from dialogue or something that was written in that chapter. The idea of heading to Poland to discover why the Poles were heading in the other direction was an inspiring motive. Ben Aitken is definitely great at chopping potatoes but he's even better at slicing apart and serving a surprising mixture of stories from the country at the "heart of Europe". In fact, several of the promised elements of the book come in the last quarter, with little of the earlier content featuring on the advertisement. The things he encounters and endeavors he undertakes (the Christmas dinner) are interesting and could be at times hilarious.

Not only does this romance come across as a bit shallow and one-sided, but it serves absolutely no purpose in the storyline and is left completely unresolved.Whilst I agree that the stereotypes of Poland we have in the UK are lazy and false, I actually believe Poland is not like anywhere else. So how should he expect us to take his opinion seriously when he does not even take it seriously enough himself? Certainly, with my first journey to Polandand getting used to a wholly new culture, I sought to find myself – to have my character reset.