Back from Bursa

Wait a moment...now that I think about it, I may not have mentioned this before we left. Carin and I just returned from a weekend adventure withe my entire class to Bursa, pronounced BOR-sa, a city on the Asian side of Turkey (as opposed to Istanbul, which is on the European side). We left Friday morning bright and early and arrived after about 5 hours of travel on 3 different buses and a water ferry (on which the bus went...picture taken here en-route). We were there until this morning (Sunday) around 10:30am, when we did the entire trip in reverse. I knew even less about Bursa than I knew about Istanbul before going there, but I feel like I have a little bit of an idea of what the place is about now.

Bursa is a city of a little over a million people and was once the capital of Turkey. As I mentioned above, it is on the Asian side of the country, so its "flavor" is a bit different than Istanbul's. We stayed at the Hotel Safran, a cute little "bed and breakfast" in the heart of old Bursa. In this area are a series of hans, which are square donut shaped buildings that now act like individualised shopping districts. The picture the right here was taken in the middle of one of the main hans, showing what I believe is the tiniest mosque I have yet seen in Turkey. All of the hans are sort of clustered in their own "district", which in turn becomes a big shopping area. Long ago, the hans were stops for travelling merchants who would leave their horses on the lower levels and offer goods and services on the upper levels. The second picture here shows what the typical arcade around a han looks like. Carin and I were able to go to the "silk han" and find some things to bring back to the States with us.

Friday afternoon after arrival I went out with the class to the Ulu Camii, the main mosque of Bursa. Carin decided to stay home for the moment and nap off some of her jetlag (basically, she arrived Thursday night and left at 7am Friday to go to Bursa! What a trooper!) The Ulu Camii was beautiful and we were fortunate enough to be there during the call to prayer. It was a little different than the mosques I've seen in Istanbul because it was organized around a large fountain in the middle of the main dome. You can see it here in a "stolen" photo I was able to snap without anyone being the wiser. Friday was also the day we visited the hans to which we would go back to later to do some shopping.

Saturday we both went with the class to the village of Cumalikizik (pronounced JUM-a-LIK-i-zik). This is a very small village that is part of UNESCO, an organization which attempts to preserve various places for cultural and historical documentation. Cumalikizik has essentially been declared entirely a "protected" place where people will, for the forseeable future, live the same types of lives they have been living for hundreds of years in the same types of buildings they have been living those lives in. Our professor, Alison, took us there to see not only old Turkish village life, but also to study a unique brand of architecture that is used copiously there -- wood frame construction with brick infill (seen in the photo here). It is a unique construction because usually brick is used as the structural material. Here, brick is used as the infill and the wood is used as the structural material.

We were led around all day by our "official" tour guide (who's name I can't rememeber right now), an architect from Bursa, and by 2 "unofficial" tour guides, these two boys that decided to follow us around all day. Our entire group of students really split up to walk around the village individually, but somehow Carin and I found ourselves in a group with the 'local' and these two boys (who seemed very excited about the fact that there were tourists in their little town). We had a blast and they allowed me to snap this photo of the two of them before we left.

It was very interesting to see a real "village life" being still lived here in Cumalikizik, although I could not help but feel a little strange about the fact that these people are essentially not allowed to progress with the times. There were almost no young people in town -- most of them move to the city to find better more exciting "modern" lives. In Cumalikizik, time moves at a snail's pace and, while history is preserved quite well, the people are shoehorned into a lifestyle that makes them almost more museum pieces than modern individuals.

The trip to Cumalikizik took about 1 1/2 hours each way via bus and afterward is when Carin and I did our shopping back in Bursa at the hans. We had a nice lazy evening and night, eating breakfast the next morning around 9am and hitting the bus. It was a short but sweet adventure to place we would have never been able to go without the information we had from my professor. Now its Sunday night and we are kind of tired, but a good weekend goes a long way. It looks like the next couple of days I will be working on the drawings I started last week and Carin will be hanging out with Lysia, the other "wife" in the group. Friday my school obligations end and Carin and I go for a few days to Barcelona and nothing but "sun and fun". I'll keep you posted. Until tomorrow, enjoy a few more pictures from Bursa and Cumalikizik below...