"It was my first year at university in 1993. The school had sent us on a student exchange program. It was an exchange between the Middle East Technical University Architecture Department in Ankara, Turkey and the Falmouth School of Art and Design in Cornwall, England. Everything had been organized by two professors from my school and the school in Falmouth. We were 3 Turkish girls and with only the address of the school we went for a once-in-a-lifetime experience!"
"After landing in Heathrow airport, we went to the information desk to find our way to Falmouth and we realized that we had to hurry to catch the last bus going to the train station from which we “might” catch the last train arriving somewhere in the region of Falmouth! So we ran to the bus, took the last train on the very last second from the train station and we arrived to a place still far from Falmouth."
"We were forced to take a taxi to go up to the school as there was no public transport at that hour between the train station and the school. The taxi man left us in front of the school. It was midnight and no sign of a living person! We, being 3 Turkish girls, far from our homes, tired of running since we arrived to London, didn’t know where to go and who to call…"
"When we looked around, we have seen only one house where the lights were still on. Without thinking about it, we directly started walking through that building. We rang; a young boy opened the door. We told him that we were coming from Turkey for a student exchange program of the School of Art and Design. He started laughing. He said “yes, sure and my name is Marco Polo! Did you come on camels? Nice joke girls! Now tell me the true story”. While he was enjoying the strange encounter that he was having with us, other young people started to get out from different doors and they encircled us with questioning eyes. Through long and funny discussions as exampled above, we figured out that this was the hostel of the school and the only student staying there who knew about us coming from Turkey was out that night. So other students, who finally believed our story or felt pity for us, let us sleep in one of the rooms until the next morning and they promised to bring us to this student in charge the next morning.
The rest of the story is not interesting. We went to see the boy in charge, he brought us to the director of the school and the director kindly invited us for a meal. He normally had sent a message to our school that he would like to prepare a lift for our arrival but we had never received the messages unfortunately. So via our little adventure, we met with our temporary school mates even before entering the school.
Afterwards he drove us to our new homes and we had a nice stay in Falmouth with lovely local people recognizing us immediately from 500 meters far (as it is a small town, everybody knew each other and we were the “those girls came from Turkey”, new heads, easy to recognize) and unforgettable memories.
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