I enjoyed this because I'm always interested in expat memoirs especially in places like Poland that I feel like we hear little about in the US. It was a typical fish out of water type story but it was well written and well-paced.

3.5 stars
I enjoyed this travel memoir from Australian Jay Martin documenting her three year stay in Poland. Her husband Tom, who was Australian’s diplomat in Warsaw was supremely busy why Martin struggled with her years “not working”, traveling, learning Polish, and keeping their marriage together. Martin has a good sense of humor and this was a quick read. Recommended for travel and language lovers; Polish and Australians and diplomats.

Pub date Sept 1.

As a reporter my job is to go, understand people I've met (try at least) and pass it further. Very often I deal with foreigners (therefore I know the feeling when You know that You don't know anything).
I couldn't wait to read similar book about my country and, well, myself. I couldn't wait for her to discover that beautiful absurdity of Poland which I really love (because in country like that there is always something to write about).
For the first part I was a bit disappointed that Mrs. Martin :) speaks very little with Poles (are we really that closed? Or used to be back then?) just scratching the surface. But then, the other part of book gave me what I wanted: things about my country that were new to me: "narodowość" matter, being mean and kind at the same time, our fighter attitude, high position of "babcia" in hierarchy and how everything here has history and deep roots that we cherish so much. Or maybe it wasn't new at all to me but seeing it through eyes of Anglo-Saxon :) was new.
Also, while she was writing about Poland I could get to know Australians better. This book was like... me and author was gazing into each other eyes: we could see one another but also a reflection of ourselves into other person's eyes.
Plus, a human story about lost expat's wife.

To sum up, it was really interesting book to read from the perspective of Polish reporter. Dziękuję.

P.S. Bardzo the Cat! <3

It happened often lately to have on my reading list memoirs written by wives of diplomats, sharing their impressions, frustrations and challenges of their life abroad. Trying - often unsuccessfully - to cope with the liguistic barriers, the sadness of being taken away from their jobs and former social and family responsibilities, with their marriage in a limbo. Maybe it should be created soon a new literary category of 'diplomatic wives memoirs'. At least, they lived to tell the story and almost created a special genre.

Jay Martin's memories of her 3 years accompanying her husband during his diplomatic assignment in Poland on behalf of the Austrialian embassy doesn't differ too much of previous works I've read. Wives able to write a memoir - and even knowing the local language - are obviously a step and a half further than the frustrated housewives spending their time calling their friends and relatives at 'home' and hardly going out of the appartment and appearing at embassy events only to complain about their precarious expat life. But besides the literay add on, the experiences as such are overwhelmingly boring. We all take decisions in life, some bad some good, and we need to get the best of it. More than one episode about the diplomat of husband coming back home early in the morning after spending the night who known where doesn't make it as a story for me, unless there is really something interesting that happened during this time. Or the wife reacted somehow, or whatever can be relevant to a story you share with the world...

But besides adopting a worn out perspective on diplomatic encounters and daily life - 'Poland is cool. It's just that my life here sometimes seems like an endless round of cocktail events with complaining expat wives...' - Jay Martin really used her experience to get the best of it. She went all over the country, revealing travel destinations unfortunately mostly unknown outside the country, learned a language known for her relatively high level of complexity and explored Europe and even the badly famed Kaliningrad. Those part of the book are the best and I really enjoyed in their fullest, before another couple of pages of complaining and experiences of couple alienation.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you are interested in European and particularly Polish history and if you are a diplomatic consort that would love one day to write a better memoir.

I personally liked the cover - joyful and appealing to someone curious about Poland and with a call for wanderlust.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot! In fact, it was the best travel books I've read in a long time. When I read a travel book, I want something intelligent, interesting, a little adventurous, thoughtful but not too critical or controversial. This book hit the mark.

The book gave a realistic tour around the former Eastern Bloc country of Poland, along with side trips to Prague, London, and Kaliningrad. The author painted nice pictures of the charm of Poland, but she also offered a fair portrait of the Polish people and their culture. She detailed her challenges of settling into a totally new city and culture without sounding whiny. She overcame her challenges over the course of the book and ended up speaking Polish like a native. I admire that.

Underlying her descriptions of her travels through Poland were the tensions and struggles of being both a diplomat's spouse and a non-working spouse. These elements of the book provided tension without drowning the book in too much drama and were well handled. I appreciated that the author finally realized that overall, she led quite a nice life during her time in Poland.

Highly recommended! I've read a lot of travel books set in Eastern Europe, and this was one of the best.

This book delighted me! The cover attracted me with its promise of “vodka and apple juice” and its hook of the saucy tagline, “Travels of an undiplomatic wife in Poland”.

Readers, have you ever wanted to leave your regular life and move to another country for a few years and try a different way of living? That doesn’t appeal to me, but I do enjoy reading about folks like the author and her husband who gave away their dog, packed their possessions and shipped them to another land. One day they were in Canberra Australia, and the next they were sipping coffee in a sunlit square in Warsaw, Poland.

Not only did they change locations, but the author’s husband changed careers and entered the Australian diplomatic service. This book is part travel, part marriage and relationships, and part self-help and personal success. I found each aspect to be fascinating as the author shared her experiences and thoughts in a well-crafted way.

Jay Martin certainly gave the three-year Polish experience her all. She learned the language, and traveled throughout Poland. She did her best to be a good diplomatic wife. Some of her experiences are funny and some, especially those dealing with the history of Poland and the Holocaust are sad. One of my favorite scenes was when the author visited a church and realized she was seeing paintings from the fifteenth century that could still speak to a woman from the twenty-first century.

The title seems to come from the author’s first time trying Polish vodka. She didn’t like it until her host added some apple juice. That seemed to sum up her feelings about this time in her life- she always tried to add something “sweet” to the challenges she encountered.

She concluded the book, “Now I could see that living an interesting life has nothing to do with where you are, what you’re doing, or the people you meet. It comes from making a choice, every day, to be interested in where you are, what you’re doing, and the people you meet.”

Highly recommend!

I loved the title but I didn't love the book. Repetitious and not very interesting for the most part. I wanted to like it, but I just didn't.

As an expat myself, I find Jay's difficulties to learn polish particularly relatable. Even though I've been exposed to my target language since I was a child, there are many singularities that are comprehensible only if you've been surrounded by a language (and/or a culture) in every possible opportunity since ever.

Her insecurities are the same as for everyone who has tried or is still trying to learn another language:

"Then we'd moved to Poland, and so much of my ability to communicate had been ripped away. I communicated for purpose in Poland. I could ask questions and understand answers. Give directions, understand the "babcias" that yelled at me. Follow the arguments of people on the street, even tell a story or two. But I couldn't be witty, or insightful, or articulate, or succinct or any of the other things I could be in my own language. I had no sense of humour. I had no personality when I spoke Polish. More and more, I silented. And every time I did, it sliced away a little of my dignity."

There is also her experience as a wife of a diplomat. She's away from her family, and friends, everything she used to know, everything she used to be. That is a big challenge too. That's the biggest challenge of all:

"Where to start.
'This language is really hard! I'm doing my best but I don't know much about German history or World War Two or what an Abwehr is, although I do know some other stuff and in another country people sometimes think I'm actually quite intelligent. And not even a year ago I had an important, well-paid job and now I don't even know how to do the shopping. And I didn't realise how stupid that would make me feel. And I didn't understand how it would be to feel so stupid all the time'.
That's what I wanted to say. But constrained by vocabulary, grammar, confidence, and the exhaustion at having to try so hard at everything, every day, I couldn't. 'Nie wiem,' I mumbled. I don't know."

I had to add these quotes to this review, as the author is always so honest, and truthful. I believe that there are some books for some people, and this might have been the one that I needed to read right now. I'm an expat, I'm a wife, I'm almost 5000 miles away from home. I don't have a cat, but a dog, and many of the things that Jay questions herself about over the book, well, I've asked them myself too every single day. After all:

'It's hard sometimes. Being a guest in someone's house, isn't it?'
I received a copy in return for my honest review.

Jay has been a policy advisor, but now finds herself as a diplomatic wife in Warsaw on her husband´s first foreign tour. Moving from Australia to Warsaw does not only include leaving the beloved dog behind, but mastering the challenging Polish language. As Jay´s husband Tom is extremely busy with his new job, she finds herself in a new and rather frustrating situation: all of a sudden, she is only a wife without a career of her own - someone of no interest to the expats she meets at work events. As much as Jay enjoys the travel opportunities coming with her expat life - not to mention drinks and smoked salmon at all those diplomatic events, she soon feels at odds with a life that has little purpose outside of yoga, tennis and the book club of the International women Group - aka the professional wives.

"Wodka and apple juice" describes Jay´s struggle with the Polish language, the increasingly strained marriage and her perceptions of live in Poland. The title derives from favorite Polish cocktail "szarlotka" with its deceivingly fruity flavor. . The book has, to say it gently, lengthy parts - especially for those readers who actually know Poland. While Jay strives to learn Polish - an admittedly complicated language, she rarely seems to leave the orbit of expatdom. Think Innocents abroad 2.0. Much of this is as fluff as the pampered lives of expat wives - no matter how brave Jay seems to feel to meet the challenges of living in Poland.

Admittedly, for someone from Australia, Central Eastern Europe might feel pretty much out of the own waters. Yet while Jay tries to discover her new country, she never leaves her comfort zone. As she once says - she is an expat, not a migrant, after all. It might be expected too much that she really gets a grip of the country, given all this, a country where she does not have to make a living but can always fall back upon all the other professional wives - as much as she likes to think she is different in a more of a free-spirited way.

For me, it was nonetheless quite interesting to read this book - I have lived in Poland - and other countries - but I was the one working there and often wondered how all those "professional wives" I sometimes came across possibly lives. This book certainly has some answers to that..

As a Pole, it's always interesting to read about Poland through the eyes of a Westerner. I greatly enjoyed reading the author's reflections on being a diplomat and the Polish psyche; however, I found the portion of the book dealing with her relationship with her husband to be the weakest by far. The marital discord portions of the book were not interwoven into the whole particularly well, and I felt those portions would have been better served by a separate book.

Vodka and Apple Juice by Jay Martin is her memoir of her three years she lived in Poland because her husband an Australian Diplomat was sent to live there. This book was an interesting look at a country that isn't usually touched upon in travel memoirs. I enjoyed this fact. I loved learning about life in Poland and reading how they felt in this country as well as their struggle to learn the Polish language. If you want a travel memoir about a country many overlook this is it. I loved reading about their lives in Poland.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review

A career woman from Canberra relocates with her husband, a diplomat, to Warsaw for the duration of his posting there. She makes an impressive effort to learn the notoriously difficult Polish language in order to better get by and understand her temporary home. She also indulges in plenty of cultural and interesting everyday explorations as she gets to know Warsaw and in her travels around Poland, including a quest for vegetarian food in a country not particularly known for such cuisine. It's an unconventional destination for travel writing or territory for expat memoirs, so it's wonderful to have something showing the light, funny, and quirky sides of a country that's more apt to be ignored or misunderstood. Loved this concept. On a darker note, Martin's marriage suffers some serious, painful issues during their time and this becomes part of her story in the country.

On the con side, the writing style felt a little weak, some passages and scenes were a bit overlong, and I didn't like the style of the dialogue - it felt recreated instead of flowing naturally with the story. But for a glimpse into Poland, a country that's surprisingly easy to fall in love with, it's a fun travel story/memoir.

You can learn a lot about the people, culture and history of Poland while reading this travel memoir. Jay follows her husband to Poland for his three year stint as a diplomat leaving their home in Australia behind. What follows is a sometimes frustrating but often humorous account of their life for the three years in Poland. I enjoyed reading about their travels all around Europe, learning some Polish words and laughing at her trails and tribulations.