Mobility of Turkey

Our journey to turkey: second mobility (5.-12. May 2012)

After the first meeting of the „Grundtvig Access Project“ in Palermo, now the second meeting in Ankara followed. 

We, a group of volunteers in Örkelljunga, (Boel, Birgitta, Rickard, Neco and Josefine) had the chance to spend one week in Turkey in order to meet people from nine different countries and to work on a corporate handbook for dealing with unanccompanied minors. 

Nevertheless, before the project started, we could spend two wonderful days in Istanbul. Thanks to Neco, who originally comes from Turkey, we were introduced to real Turkish families – that means: eating, eating, eating as well as drinking chai tea all the time, Turkish dance, huge picnics, singing, eating on the floor (especially for Rickard a challenge), strange toilets... We used the two days to see all the touristic highlights of Istanbul, such as the blue mosque, Hagia Sophia and the vast bazaars. 

On Monday we took a bus to Ankara, during the 7 hour bus tour we could relax a bit and see a lot of Turkey’s landscape, which was quite impressive and more mountainous than expected. We had a really warm welcome by Neco’s parents and brothers, who were awaiting us with Turkish pizza (pide).

Although the family members could not speak English, and our Turkish knowledge consisted of merely 8 words, such as „bread, yes, no, hello, goodbye, thanks, friend, Sweden“, the communication by body language was working well and moreover quite funny. The next morning the meeting with the other participants from Germany, Lithuania, Rumania, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Poland and Turkey took place. We were discussing how we work with refugees in our country and how the handbook should be structured. 

As we were invited by Neco’s aunt, grandparents and the hundreds of cousins in the evening, we were not joining the group for dinner, but did not regret this. The living room was converted into a bazaar, as Necos aunt sells clothes, and we all were buying scarves and eating tons of good food afterwards, plus at least three pieces of cake. After that we collapsed happily into our beds and slept until 8 am – then the last part of the meeting happened. The tasks for the next meeting in Lithuania were determined: every group is supposed to write a report about the best practice example for dealing with unaccompanied minors, and the special needs for the social worker or volunteer respectively. After this the group headed off to the archaeological museum and to a castle, but when caught by a thunderstorm, we had to look for shelter in a nice tea house. We enjoyed the evening and night in a Turkish restaurant with mezze, more food, alcohol (not very Muslim), Turkish live music, dancing and taking part in a bachelor’s party. Fortunately we could sleep quite long the next day and just had to relax in the bus on our way back to Istanbul, where we were spending one more day. This week was so amazing for us, as we were meeting all these nice and extremely hospitable people. We gained a lot of experienced, but also some extra pounds. ;)