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There's An Egg in my Soup: ... and other adventures of an Irishman in Poland
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.
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.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 21, 2007
2 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Tom Galvin
10 books8 followersAuthor and journalist and passionate musician living in Ireland with my Polish wife, Asia, and twin babies, Alex and Alicia. Lived in Poland as a teacher and journalist between 1994-1999 and returned home to Ireland to write a book on Polish experience, There's an Egg in My Soup. First novel published in 2011, Gabriel's Gate, a dark thriller set on a commune in recession-era Ireland. Two other novels written: White Skin, Black Hearts, a travelscape thriller set in Mexico; and The Russian Doll, a drama with an 'existential romance' set in the US and in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Excerpts and more on www.tomgalvin.com
Excerpts and more on www.tomgalvin.com
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 24, 2020
Having moved from the US to Poland in 1992, little of this book surprised me. It's all here, the worst parts of any western-centric travel guide: the cockiness, the expat self-importance, the treatment of Poles as simple folk. The narrator is a wholly unlikable character who regularly celebrates his own ignorance. I kept reading, hoping for redemption, for some self-introspection, and although there are so many "almost there" moments, it never comes home.
February 21, 2012
If you think you are going to know Poland after this read, you are so wrong. Author is exaggerating many things, although I must admit that many things would be correct- for the time he was there. Many things has change since then in Poland.
BUT what I didn't like was Tom laughing at polish cuisine. Beetroot soup for example and egg in it. Hello, you have carrot or beetroot cake! How weird. Or carrot and orange soup. And almost all irish soups are made like for toothless kids- puréed. And you Irish have two taps. What for? To burn your hands under hot and than cool them under cold? I can go on:) Or should write my own "Polish girl in Irish wilderness" book:)
It was a nice read, I think Tom wanted to write nice funny adventure book. Sorry, I don't think he made it.
BUT what I didn't like was Tom laughing at polish cuisine. Beetroot soup for example and egg in it. Hello, you have carrot or beetroot cake! How weird. Or carrot and orange soup. And almost all irish soups are made like for toothless kids- puréed. And you Irish have two taps. What for? To burn your hands under hot and than cool them under cold? I can go on:) Or should write my own "Polish girl in Irish wilderness" book:)
It was a nice read, I think Tom wanted to write nice funny adventure book. Sorry, I don't think he made it.
August 3, 2011
Since I'm living in Poland, and although a number of years after this book was published and many things have changed, certain things made me smile, because we experience them every day.
I have also learnt that you haven't experienced Poland for real if you have only lived in Warsaw (like Willie and I), just visiting the countryside. I don't know if I would have been brave enough.
I have also learnt that you haven't experienced Poland for real if you have only lived in Warsaw (like Willie and I), just visiting the countryside. I don't know if I would have been brave enough.
August 6, 2016
This book hauntingly details the experiences that I have encountered throughout the past two years as a teacher in Poland from 2012 to 2014. The book is extremely well written and captures a lot of the small details about the Polish.
January 29, 2008
I love travel books, so this one is really amazing set in Poland, an irishmans adventures there as a teacher.
June 14, 2009
I was surprised by how good this book was. Thoughtful, evocative, and generally quite lovely.
May 10, 2015
There's an Egg in my Soup (2007) by Tom Galvin is an account of living in a rural town 40km East of Warsaw in the mid 1990s. Galvin went there on a scholarship to teach English and the book is his memoir of what the town and his stay was like.
It's not a brilliant book by any stretch but it is quite interesting. Poland 20 years ago was still recovering from Communism and Soviet occupation. It wasn't clear in the early 1990s whether Poland would stay poor and depressed. Today Poland looks rich, successful and dynamic and is one of the great success stories of the end of Soviet Occupation.
Galvin's book describes Misk Mozowiecki and his time in the school fairly well. He paints a fair portrait of what the place was like and the way the people were. It's quite warm and funny in parts. It's not a hilarious memoir but nor is it without feeling.
If you're interested in Poland and how Eastern Europe faired after the fall of Communism it's worth a read, it's not great literature but it's light, entertaining read.
It's not a brilliant book by any stretch but it is quite interesting. Poland 20 years ago was still recovering from Communism and Soviet occupation. It wasn't clear in the early 1990s whether Poland would stay poor and depressed. Today Poland looks rich, successful and dynamic and is one of the great success stories of the end of Soviet Occupation.
Galvin's book describes Misk Mozowiecki and his time in the school fairly well. He paints a fair portrait of what the place was like and the way the people were. It's quite warm and funny in parts. It's not a hilarious memoir but nor is it without feeling.
If you're interested in Poland and how Eastern Europe faired after the fall of Communism it's worth a read, it's not great literature but it's light, entertaining read.
August 17, 2015
Bravo for going to Poland and writing a book about it. And, fair enough, Poland is a hard sell in the travel literature/memoir genre, so it must have been hard convincing publishers to take this on. And I actually learned plenty about Poland from the book, so that was good.
A couple of things stopped me enjoying it more. 1) the tenses were all over the shop. Example: I arrived at the bar. A guy comes up to me. Stick to the past or the present, but stop switching back and forth; it just looks sloppy. 2) way too much grim drinking. I like my authors to kick back a little and reveal their alcoholic tendencies from time to time, but less is more in this dept. In this book however, the boozing just never ends.
A couple of things stopped me enjoying it more. 1) the tenses were all over the shop. Example: I arrived at the bar. A guy comes up to me. Stick to the past or the present, but stop switching back and forth; it just looks sloppy. 2) way too much grim drinking. I like my authors to kick back a little and reveal their alcoholic tendencies from time to time, but less is more in this dept. In this book however, the boozing just never ends.
March 21, 2013
A nice easy read. Nothing spectacular but interesting nonetheless.
December 31, 2013
Not so much a review as a trip down memory lane
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June 24, 2014
Really enjoyable book. Once I started it I couldn't put it down. Captures some great details about living in Poland. The author writes in a way that's easy to follow and absorbs the reader.
August 21, 2014
Alot of winging about a poor country at that time. Shame he wasn't a little more positive
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews