The O’Brien Press

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Five years in the Polish wilderness.

Queues for groceries, unfathomable bus timetables, inexplicable traditions and truly bizarre soup – this is Poland in the mid-1990s, where Tom Galvin innocently went as a trainee teacher.

Without a word of Polish, he is plunged into a strange and rapidly changing culture, as the country shakes off its troubled and complex past and faces the challenges of being a part of modern Europe.

Tom spent five years dealing with long and freezing winters, lack of good food, loneliness and hardship, as he discovered the misery as well as the joy of Polish life. He returned in 2007, to find surprising changes to the country that had been his home for the first years of his working life.

An interesting and amusing account of living and working abroad, which documents a unique period of Polish history.

TOM GALVIN went to Poland in 1994 to live and teach in a Polish state school for five years. He later worked as a journalist for The Warsaw Voice and Radio Polonia in Warsaw. He now works for the Evening Herald, on the Polski Herald supplement and as books editor. He has written two books for the tourist market The Little Book of Dublin and That’s Cork. He lives in Wicklow with his Polish wife, Asia.

Masterly description . . . a gentle, engaging read

The Irish Times

Joyous account of our hero floundering . . . he is winningly self-effacing and willingly self-deprecating

The Sunday Tribune

Great reading

Sunday Business Post