I said I would have more to write about my Harvard-sponsored spring break trip to Turkey, and indeed I do. In the interest of sounding smart and well-cultured I should probably be devoting this blog real estate to the substantive things I learned, but I am a human interest person at heart and that’s where I want to focus first.
After several days in Istanbul and Ankara (the capital) we visited Mardin, a small town in rural southeast Turkey near Syria, and at one point we got off the bus to look at some ruins. We were immediately surrounded by schoolchildren.
I love kids, and skipped that part of our tour up the hill so that I could try to communicate with them. We were having a ball through non-verbal interaction, but unfortunately the only Turkish I know is “thank you” (“teşekkürler”), which doesn’t make me the most riveting conversation partner. Eventually it became clear that the little boys wanted to sword fight with these very thorny plants that they were reluctant to handle. Well, I was feeling adventuresome and was willing to grab the bull by the horns—or in this case, grab the plant by the thorns, ha ha—and go at it. Yeah. If I had any Turkish ability, I would have understood that what those kids were saying was “This is poison ivy.” Whoops! Maybe should have spent some more time with my phrasebook. I now know that when learning the basics of a foreign language, the phrase “I’m happy to play with you as long as that plant isn’t a toxic inflammatory species that will soon make my hands feel like they are being stabbed with a thousand needles,” should be right up there with “Where is the bathroom?” and “Nice to meet you.”
There were dozens of other adventures—going to a Turkish movie premier, haggling at the Grand Bazaar, cruising down the Bosphorus—but for lack of space I will skip straight to the last day of the trip. Until the very last minute, I wasn’t at all convinced that I wanted to do a Turkish bath. It seemed a little cliché, but this particular one—the Cağaloğlu Hamam—was in an Indiana Jones movie and is featured on the “1000 Places to See Before You Die” list, so I figured I’d at least check it out. Yeah, so I realized there would be some disrobing since it is, after all, a bath, and I had prepared myself to get over my American prudish tendencies in that respect—I guess I didn’t realize that the workers would be naked, too. Even thinking back on it now, I’m still not sure why they needed to be. I’m also not sure what I had envisioned beforehand, but a short, rotund, older naked Turkish woman named Gu is what I got. I’ll try to be delicate in the details, but let me just say the scrubbing is vigorous and the suds are abundant. At one point Gu gestured for me to flip over, and when I did it was so slick I went sliding right across the marble slab and she had to grab my ankle and pull me back. The Turkish also have quite a spirited approach to shampooing that encases your entire head in suds and ends with them hurling basins full of water at your face.
Whether I was half-drowning in an exfoliating spa, being treated to lunch at the Ritz by the chairman of the Turkish SEC, or on a four-hour walking tour led by a university professor so controversial in his opinions that he travelled with a bodyguard for personal protection, I was having a terrific time. For all the amazing people I met, for all the incredible Turkish VIPs who generously gave their time to our group, and most of all for all the little moments I will remember and treasure for a lifetime, teşekkürler for my trip to Turkey, Harvard!
– Erin
