Our Man in Gdańsk

Re: the apparent time-line gaffe - Galvin spent five years in Poland in the mid-'90s, went back to Ireland for a decade, then returned to Poland in 2007 to see how it had changed since he'd lived there ...

Cheers,

Declan

I see. I thought the blurb meant he returned to Ireland in 2007 to discover many changes.

Honestly, you have to be as dumb as a box of hair to not be able to figure out Polish bus schedules. Now that I think about, though, yes, I've known a foreigner or two who couldn't and I even know of one, British of course, who refused to 'learn' how to dial a (private) phone....

Also, lines for groceries in the 90's?

"Lack of good food"????

Either this editorial hype of Mr Galvin is an idiot (both or course are also possible).

I know Tom. Met him when he was in Warsaw and worked with him a little. He was working on a book about Poland years ago - so I suppose this is it. If so then I appear in the book somewhere so I am duty bound to defend it.

I have not read it yet, so that will be difficult. But I know that he is a very good writer and now works for the Irish Independant.

Most of the book centres being in Polasd as a foreigner in the mid 1990s - a very different country to how it is today. More culture shock, in other words. But as you say, the blurb probably does not do the thing justice. and maybe the title should have included the word 'waiter' at the begining. I presume it refers to zurek.

"There's a sausage in me tators!"

I don't want to sound like that ever-offended "I'm-proud-to-be-Polish-and-you-better-remember-that!" fella which so frequently appears in numerous Polish jokes across the Big Pond, but in my opinion the main reason for Mr Galvin's narrowed and sometimes unflattering picture of Poland is the fact that he spent most of his time there in a relatively small town of Minsk Mazowiecki.

While with 37 000 inhabitants it could be considered a city by Irish standards, for a country populated by almost 40 million souls it still offers a tiny sample of its national character.

And then, quite contrary to almost uniform Polish landscape, the country's regional differences become quite apparent upon closer inspection. Cities, towns and villages of Poland's West are literary worlds apart from those located on the other side of the Vistula River. Even the capital city of Warsaw, situated on the river is very sharply cut in two oh so uneven halves by its banks, not unlike Dublin is divided into Northside and Southside by the Liffey.

Had the author spent his time in, take, Poznan, a bustling city the size of Dublin, home to International Fair and Expo, boasting 16 very punctual tram lines, direct train services to Berlin, Moscow and Brussels, an airport, a motorway bypass, VW car factory, Bestfoods, Bridgestone, Glaxo-Smith-Kline and Beiersdorf manufactures, six or seven universities, 3 multiplexes and several other cinemas, a Grand Opera house, theatres, a ZOO, shopping districts, steaming hawt nightclubs and a picturesque Old Town crowned with a genuine Rennaisance Town Hall and fully supplied with fancy food and drinks by numerous and variously themed restaurants, bars and pubs that would be more than happy to satisfy the whims of your palate till very late into the night (provided you know how to behave yourself); his image of this fast transforming country would be altogether different.

It is also a pity that he din't live there long enough to witness the economic crisis of the early 2000's, which eventually forced so many of us to migrate to UK i IE. That could explain a lot about our young, hardworking, overqualified lads adding their brick or two to today's Irish prosperity.

I've received a comment from Tom Galvin criticising me for not reading his book before criticising it in the "review - well, whatever it was." Whatever it was, it was not a review of his book.

I repeat here the only criticism of the book itself: "it sounds awful." As anyone who reads carefully can see, all the other critical comments refer to the blurb on the publisher's website and Hourican's review.