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We called at our nearby delicatessen and purchased cheese and olives, our bakery opposite for bread and our local fruiterer for the rest of our needs for the day. Each person took the time to welcome us and serve us with a smile, setting us up for the friendliness that we were to meet everywhere in Bursa.
The Bursa City museum is a dream venue – the lowest price entry at 3 lira and the audio information headset, operating by sensors in the rooms, was free. Footsteps guided us along a trail of sultans who had particular relationships to Bursa, important moments in Bursa’s history, the Independence War, Atatürk and the Republic, town planning over the ages, natural history and the development of local government. The corridors are lined with fascinating old photos of Bursa street scenes and activities, including scenes of the coccoon markets in the streets.
Osman Gazi led the conquest of Bursa in 1326 and it became the first capital of the newly forming Ottoman Empire. Osman was succeeded by Orhan Gazi, who expanded the empire considerably, but Constantinople was still in Byzantine (Greek) hands until Mehmet the Conqueror took it in 1435. The capital moved to Erdine (on the European side, near the present Bulgarian border) after 76 years but Bursa remained an important city. Of particular interest were the displays leading up to the present day. The excellent public transport system was recently redesigned, with the opening of the new arrangements only being in the last two to four years. Bursa leads the way with recycling and with concern for the cleanliness of the region. There were city plans from way back and also the current one on display. Amazingly it is only in the second half of the 20th century that regular city plans were made, perhaps reflecting the growth of the city and the need for planning and the development of city planning as a discipline. The early plans were really done after the event and were merely maps, with vague areas outlined for forest and farms. The Atatürk section told of how the citizens of Bursa had all worn European-style hats to meet Atatürk when he came to Bursa to launch his ant-fez and pro-hat revolution in the 1930s – showing their support. Astute young people mentioned to Atatürk that Bursa needed a sports stadium, so he decreed that they should have one and gave 1000 lira of his own money towards it. That left local officials nowhere to go except to smile and cough up the rest of the money and build it. Atatürk was a great supporter of the redevelopment of industry in Bursa and re-established the silk industry with modern factories.
Downstairs there was a delightful ethnographic display that focussed on local issues. We learnt from the commentary that the girl a family had tentatively picked out for their son to marry would be sussed out by the boy’s mother, who would contrive to go to the public bath house at the same time as her. Starting school was a big event and children would be taken around to see everyone and made a big fuss of at that time. Circumcision was also a community event, with the chosen one being taken out to visit the tomb of a religious leader or statesman and for a tour of the town, to take his mind off what was ahead. An interesting classroom scene showed a teacher with two sections of writing on the chalkboard – one in Arabic and one in Turkish, reminding us of the writing reform that Atatürk brought in, where the written language would use the western alphabet and phonetic spelling. Every little shop scene was detailed, some with videos of craftsmen at work, covering old fashioned trades, including felt making. To make felt it seems that fibres are just trampled together and then designs are applied with dyes. Old skiing equipment looked very heavy – the mountains around here are famous for their winter sports. We finished with a display of silk making or yore and examples of exquisite silk fabrics, and a growing photo wall where families could contribute the earliest photo from their collections. The photo display seemed a good idea for the Inverleigh Historical Society to consider.
We had been advised by Seda, a couch surfer from Bursa who we would be meeting soon, that there was a very interesting traditional village, Cumalıkızık, nearby, so we travelled the 16 km east to visit it. The bus dropped us off at an enormous, sloping village square that had beautiful, ancient plane trees shading stalls selling souvenirs, crafts, tasty treats and local produce. The green plum was featuring amongst the cherries, white mulberries and strawberries. 
We strolled down the hill to a little gazebo above a spring outlet, which I described as a nice private little spot but which Keith rightly pointed out, was raised on a public road beside a spot to collect spring water. Soon we had been looked at by many locals and a whole bus load of teenagers who were on a school excursion to see the village, made famous by being the setting of a currently running Turkish soap opera.
The village is really charming and once we had walked up beyond the square we had lots of choices of narrow lanes to follow, each with Ottoman houses built close to each other. 
Some streets had streams of water running down them and in narrow lanes, only wading would have been possible. We popped out at the top of the village where there was another spring outlet and where most of the streams of water seemed to originate. Women with little baskets were picking white mulberries in the orchard beyond a gate. They would lay a small tarpaulin beneath a tree and bang the branches with sticks. We saw this done in a public park in Sanlıurfa, but on that occasion, men and boys had thrown sticks and rocks into the tree to dislodge the mulberries, at considerable risk to other users of the park.
Walking tentatively towards a lot of angry noise, we came upon villagers remonstrating with a man who stood on a doorstep in front of a Turkish flag and who appeared to be the mayor. The noise was the Turkish version of ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ and we had been lucky enough to chance upon the filming of the soap opera. A director sat on his chair to the side, giving instructions while others manned the camera, the sound equipment and the light reflecting boards. Immediately behind the film crew a group of regular villagers had gathered to enjoy the filming, looking indistinguishable to us from the extras. We stayed to see a young actor fluff his lines in the next scene, a scene in which he is obviously of lower status than the mayor and is the type not to be relied upon.
After a relaxing ramble all over the village, and an ice-cream purchased from a vendor on a motor cycle, we had time for a cup of tea before the bus was due. A mother and son had been on a bus tour to the village for the day and it was a surprise to hear both speak English quite well. The mother would have been in her seventies and was particularly interested in our forthcoming trip to Gallipoli and Çanakkle. She wanted to give us her book about those places but, being in Turkish, we opted just to look at the pictures. They left to go to the only public toilet in the village – at the school – and paid for our tea as well as their own.
Back in Bursa we had a little catch up nap and a shower before going to the post office to meet Seda and Barış, our couch surfing connections. They picked us up in their car and took us for a tour of the areas that we had not yet explored. We stopped for a cup of tea at Tophani, which is the old section of the town, and then visited the Sahadet Mosque, not wearing a scarf since Sedda didn’t have one and I didn’t wear mine. It felt a little odd but Barış had checked with a man before we proceeded. This mosque, like a couple of others we had visited, had the fountain (taps for washing) inside too, so perhaps that is a regular feature of Bursa mosques. Our final destination was a restaurant high on the mountainside where the sparkling lights of the city below looked like so many pieces of a mosaic. Luckily the restaurant provided blankets for their patrons to wrap themselves in because it was considerably colder than down in the city.
Seda and Barış are both secondary teachers who, at the very busiest stage of the school year and with family staying, had been kind enough to spend the evening with us. Seda speaks fluent English and teaches it while Barış understood a lot and could speak some too. He teaches philosophy, a subject that is taken by all Turkish students. We had a wonderful evening, our conversation ranging over all kinds of subjects. It was a particular joy to tease out and hear about our countries’ different approaches to issues such as ongoing teacher education and student issues, multiculturalism, modernisation and religion. Seda’s translations for the tricky bits enabled us all to join in. They are a very welcoming and hospitable young couple and we very much enjoyed meeting them. They delivered us back to our hotel via some streets that we could explore on foot the next day.
We called at our nearby delicatessen and purchased cheese and olives, our bakery opposite for bread and our local fruiterer for the rest of our needs for the day. Each person took the time to welcome us and serve us with a smile, setting us up for the friendliness that we were to meet everywhere in Bursa.
The Bursa City museum is a dream venue – the lowest price entry at 3 lira and the audio information headset, operating by sensors in the rooms, was free. Footsteps guided us along a trail of sultans who had particular relationships to Bursa, important moments in Bursa’s history, the Independence War, Atatürk and the Republic, town planning over the ages, natural history and the development of local government. The corridors are lined with fascinating old photos of Bursa street scenes and activities, including scenes of the coccoon markets in the streets.
Osman Gazi led the conquest of Bursa in 1326 and it became the first capital of the newly forming Ottoman Empire. Osman was succeeded by Orhan Gazi, who expanded the empire considerably, but Constantinople was still in Byzantine (Greek) hands until Mehmet the Conqueror took it in 1435. The capital moved to Erdine (on the European side, near the present Bulgarian border) after 76 years but Bursa remained an important city. Of particular interest were the displays leading up to the present day. The excellent public transport system was recently redesigned, with the opening of the new arrangements only being in the last two to four years. Bursa leads the way with recycling and with concern for the cleanliness of the region. There were city plans from way back and also the current one on display. Amazingly it is only in the second half of the 20th century that regular city plans were made, perhaps reflecting the growth of the city and the need for planning and the development of city planning as a discipline. The early plans were really done after the event and were merely maps, with vague areas outlined for forest and farms. The Atatürk section told of how the citizens of Bursa had all worn European-style hats to meet Atatürk when he came to Bursa to launch his ant-fez and pro-hat revolution in the 1930s – showing their support. Astute young people mentioned to Atatürk that Bursa needed a sports stadium, so he decreed that they should have one and gave 1000 lira of his own money towards it. That left local officials nowhere to go except to smile and cough up the rest of the money and build it. Atatürk was a great supporter of the redevelopment of industry in Bursa and re-established the silk industry with modern factories.Downstairs there was a delightful ethnographic display that focussed on local issues. We learnt from the commentary that the girl a family had tentatively picked out for their son to marry would be sussed out by the boy’s mother, who would contrive to go to the public bath house at the same time as her. Starting school was a big event and children would be taken around to see everyone and made a big fuss of at that time. Circumcision was also a community event, with the chosen one being taken out to visit the tomb of a religious leader or statesman and for a tour of the town, to take his mind off what was ahead. An interesting classroom scene showed a teacher with two sections of writing on the chalkboard – one in Arabic and one in Turkish, reminding us of the writing reform that Atatürk brought in, where the written language would use the western alphabet and phonetic spelling. Every little shop scene was detailed, some with videos of craftsmen at work, covering old fashioned trades, including felt making. To make felt it seems that fibres are just trampled together and then designs are applied with dyes. Old skiing equipment looked very heavy – the mountains around here are famous for their winter sports. We finished with a display of silk making or yore and examples of exquisite silk fabrics, and a growing photo wall where families could contribute the earliest photo from their collections. The photo display seemed a good idea for the Inverleigh Historical Society to consider.
We had been advised by Seda, a couch surfer from Bursa who we would be meeting soon, that there was a very interesting traditional village, Cumalıkızık, nearby, so we travelled the 16 km east to visit it. The bus dropped us off at an enormous, sloping village square that had beautiful, ancient plane trees shading stalls selling souvenirs, crafts, tasty treats and local produce. The green plum was featuring amongst the cherries, white mulberries and strawberries. We strolled down the hill to a little gazebo above a spring outlet, which I described as a nice private little spot but which Keith rightly pointed out, was raised on a public road beside a spot to collect spring water. Soon we had been looked at by many locals and a whole bus load of teenagers who were on a school excursion to see the village, made famous by being the setting of a currently running Turkish soap opera.The village is really charming and once we had walked up beyond the square we had lots of choices of narrow lanes to follow, each with Ottoman houses built close to each other. Some streets had streams of water running down them and in narrow lanes, only wading would have been possible. We popped out at the top of the village where there was another spring outlet and where most of the streams of water seemed to originate. Women with little baskets were picking white mulberries in the orchard beyond a gate. They would lay a small tarpaulin beneath a tree and bang the branches with sticks. We saw this done in a public park in Sanlıurfa, but on that occasion, men and boys had thrown sticks and rocks into the tree to dislodge the mulberries, at considerable risk to other users of the park.Walking tentatively towards a lot of angry noise, we came upon villagers remonstrating with a man who stood on a doorstep in front of a Turkish flag and who appeared to be the mayor. The noise was the Turkish version of ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ and we had been lucky enough to chance upon the filming of the soap opera. A director sat on his chair to the side, giving instructions while others manned the camera, the sound equipment and the light reflecting boards. Immediately behind the film crew a group of regular villagers had gathered to enjoy the filming, looking indistinguishable to us from the extras. We stayed to see a young actor fluff his lines in the next scene, a scene in which he is obviously of lower status than the mayor and is the type not to be relied upon.After a relaxing ramble all over the village, and an ice-cream purchased from a vendor on a motor cycle, we had time for a cup of tea before the bus was due. A mother and son had been on a bus tour to the village for the day and it was a surprise to hear both speak English quite well. The mother would have been in her seventies and was particularly interested in our forthcoming trip to Gallipoli and Çanakkle. She wanted to give us her book about those places but, being in Turkish, we opted just to look at the pictures. They left to go to the only public toilet in the village – at the school – and paid for our tea as well as their own.Back in Bursa we had a little catch up nap and a shower before going to the post office to meet Seda and Barış, our couch surfing connections. They picked us up in their car and took us for a tour of the areas that we had not yet explored. We stopped for a cup of tea at Tophani, which is the old section of the town, and then visited the Sahadet Mosque, not wearing a scarf since Sedda didn’t have one and I didn’t wear mine. It felt a little odd but Barış had checked with a man before we proceeded. This mosque, like a couple of others we had visited, had the fountain (taps for washing) inside too, so perhaps that is a regular feature of Bursa mosques. Our final destination was a restaurant high on the mountainside where the sparkling lights of the city below looked like so many pieces of a mosaic. Luckily the restaurant provided blankets for their patrons to wrap themselves in because it was considerably colder than down in the city.Seda and Barış are both secondary teachers who, at the very busiest stage of the school year and with family staying, had been kind enough to spend the evening with us. Seda speaks fluent English and teaches it while Barış understood a lot and could speak some too. He teaches philosophy, a subject that is taken by all Turkish students. We had a wonderful evening, our conversation ranging over all kinds of subjects. It was a particular joy to tease out and hear about our countries’ different approaches to issues such as ongoing teacher education and student issues, multiculturalism, modernisation and religion. Seda’s translations for the tricky bits enabled us all to join in. They are a very welcoming and hospitable young couple and we very much enjoyed meeting them. They delivered us back to our hotel via some streets that we could explore on foot the next day.
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