Harvard Kennedy School's Turkey Trek

by admissions

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 06:48 AM EDT

Greetings from Istanbul! It’s spring break, and I’m on a ten day Turkey Trek with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. It’s a student-led voyage that takes students to a particular locale, usually the home country of the trip’s organizers, and then combines the must-see tourist destinations with meetings and info sessions with really high level people, courtesy of the H stamp. Without the Harvard name and group affiliation, I think it’s much less likely that these dignitaries would respond favorably to me just saying “Hi, I’m Erin, I’m a tourist from America and I would like do a Q&A session with your Minister of Foreign Affairs. Is he busy right now?”

This is actually the fourth trip abroad I’ve taken at HLS (see my earlier blog on India), each one gussied up with those cool special events you can only get by waving the Crimson banner, and each one subsidized by either Uncle John (Harvard) or generous sponsors. I’ve been to Israel with the Jewish Law Students Association, India with the South Asian Law Students Association, South Korea with the Asian Law Students Association, and now Turkey with the Harvard Kennedy School, and I am not Jewish, South Asian, Asian, or a Kennedy School student. Many groups will let non-members come on their trips if you get picked, usually based on a short essay about why you want to go.

As I write this, I’ve only been in Turkey for two days, which is why I’ve already deemed this blog one of two for Turkey, because I know that next week I will want to write about Turkey again. We don’t start the “cool meetings” part until tomorrow, when we meet with a Turkish Army General, then the Minister of Foreign Affairs, then go to a panel convened for us with the former Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey, a prominent newspaper writer, and the managing director of the Economic Policy and Research Foundation of Turkey. For these first two days we’ve focused on hitting the sites every tourist in Istanbul wants to see: Ayasofya, the Blue Mosque, the underground Cistern, the Topkapi Palace, the Dolmabahçe Palace, the Istanbul Modern Museum, etc. We saw Moses’ rod and Mohammed’s footprint of at the Topkapi Palace, enshrined just a short distance from the old harem building. Not sure what it says about tourists’ values that the religious relics are covered under the general admission fee, but a peek inside the harem warrants an extra 15 Turkish Lira (about $10). Not sure what it says about us that we paid it!

In addition to the cultural differences you’re likely to find in a guidebook, travelling always reminds me to *think*about the little everyday differences. I’m sure this sounds thoughtfully introspective, but the particular reminder I’m thinking of is a little less poetic. When I first got to the hotel In Istanbul, I used the bathroom and in my jet-lagged fog, remembered vaguely that some foreign toilets have weak flushes, so when I saw the large silver knob next to the toilet I resolved to give it a good hard twist with some gusto. Yeah, that gusto turned into gush-o when I was rudely awakened from my sleepy state by a large bidet stream comin’ at me with the force of a firehose! I had to mop up the whole bathroom floor and pray that the front of my jeans would dry before my roommate arrived (we were on separate flights) so I wouldn’t have to explain that I got sprayed with toilet water. It was clean water, but still. It came from the toilet.

Well, the “happy” ending to this story is that by the time our group met up in the lobby, at least three people—including my roommate!—all were laughing about having the exact same experience, all with jeans damp in more or less the same pattern. I guess that’s something other than the Crimson banner that the Turks can use to identify the Harvard students.

– Erin

This article originally appeared on HLS in Focus.