Zagubieni na „Dzikim Wschodzie”. Polska lat dziewięćdziesiątych dwudziestego wieku we wspomnieniach Michaela Morana i Toma Galvina
Lost in the “Wild East”: Poland of the 1990s in the Memoirs of Michael Moran and Tom Galvin

Summary/Abstract: The paper attempts to analyze the representations of Poland of the 1990s included in two travel memoirs: Michael Moran’s A Country in the Moon (2010) and Tom Galvin’s There Is an Egg In My Soup (2007) in the light of travel writing generic conventions. In a classic British or American travelogue, the experience of otherness is usually the most welcome and fascinating aspect of visiting a foreign country, but the traveler retains a safe position of an observer and commentator. A long-term stay, on the other hand, forces one to leave one’s comfort zone and may lead to a culture shock, as is the case with Michael Moran, an Australian, admirer of Chopin’s music and expert in market economy, and Tom Galvin, a young teacher of English at a provincial high school. Both came to Poland as Western experts to help the Polish people in going through the process of the post-1989 transformation. In their books, the authors, on the one hand, regard themselves as explorers eager to get to know, and present to their readers, an unknown, exotic country, while on the other hand, they become expatriates lost in the “Wild East.” Genuine interest in Polish history and culture becomes a strategy to deal with the clash between expectations and reality. Eventually, Moran and Galvin were able to overcome culture shock and discover in Poland values and attitudes they could claim as significant in their own lives.

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