This morning, after a late start, we rambled off to the Tophanı area, where there is an arch in the ancient walls that leads you up a steep hill inside the citadel area.
A blue line on the road led us around the notable old buildings and past a current Saturday morning’s activities, since this area is very much lived in. Bursa was founded by Prusias I, 232 – 192 BC, and it is believed that Hannibal sought refuge here with him. In gratitude, Hannibal built a township and named it Prusias in the king’s honour. Later the Bythians built the ramparts and they were repaired at various stages with the last restorations being completed in 2005.The first building on the blue line tour was a very pretty old house from the mid 17th Century which had belonged to a man who collected taxes from the Jews. At the museum yesterday I had learnt that there were communities of Jews and Christians, who mixed for commercial purposes such as shopping in the market, but whose entertainments were kept strictly segregated. It was illegal for a Jew or a Christian to indulge in any form of entertainment except in designated squares; imprisonment being the consequence.
Next we ran into an enormous tour of ladies who looked like they hailed from Konya because, despite the temperature being in the high 20s, they all wore two layers of full length clothing. They were obedient and orderly to a fault, with many of them sporting pink cardboard sponsorship visors on top of their scarves. 
We were all visiting the Uftade Mosque, which was built in 1579, on a site where there previously had been a church. The Yer Kapi Mosque was next, built in the late 1300s in the time of Murat I. This was one of the oldest mosques we have visited and had buildings right up to it. Even more boxed in was a little mosque, whose name I don’t recall, but the information about it said that it was so small inside that it had no spot for people to congregate. We followed the walls around – in some spots they have been breached to allow garage doors to be inserted – and passed many very humble homes which use the old walls for part of their structure. A horse and cart, driven by teenagers, patrolled the streets to collect scrap metal.
Rounding a corner, we came to an enormous modern square where children were battling it out in the Saturday morning soccer competition on an enclosed field, other youngsters were screaming around the square on their bikes and new bikes were displayed for sale. 
A van with the back doors open and a sewing machine and fabrics displayed drove past with a loud hailer calling people to bring out their mending jobs. 
Looking down an alley we saw a group of children laughing and playing, the timeless hopscotch pattern chalked on the road. Keith lingered taking their photo – an interesting situation since it is intrusive at one level and breaks into the scene that we are observing, and yet I am in favour of unobtrusive photography since it has not imposed us on others. Some of the children responded by following us at a little distance. We said “Hello,” and they replied and kept on. They waited patiently outside the tiny haberdashery shop we entered and then had a well rehearsed little conversation in primary school English. Satisfied, they giggled and proudly ran off.The shop we had entered was like going into a time warp for me. It was Miss Guildford’s shop in Union Road, Surrey Hills, in the late 1950s come back to life in Turkey. Of course the man found buttons in ancient boxes to match our missing ones, and, just like Miss Guildford, he had piles and piles of white singlets for sale.
Exiting through the wall gate and walking to the gardens, we found that the tomb of Orhan Gazi, 1326 – 1360, was closed while the caretaker ate. A kind man showed us the open window through which we could see the impressive tomb, flanked by smaller ones, quite clearly. Finally we just had time to look at the clock tower, climb down the many stairs to the lower road level, find our way through a poorer suburb and power walk in our quest to reach the Karagöz Puppet museum by performance time. 
It was a very long way in the heat, so by the time we arrived at quarter to two, we were boiling and dripping. Keith sat under a tree to have some lunch and I went off to buy an ice-cream in a venue that will be opening next Monday. We watched our fellow audience members arrive and realised that we were about fifty years older than most of them. Still, there were a few supervising adults and we were pleased to see another cultural tourist arrive.We looked in one room of the museum before being ushered downstairs to buy a ticket ready for the performance to begin. Turkey has a long tradition of puppetry and of the Karagöz technique in particular. The puppets are made of translucent skin which is jointed with little knots and coloured with dyes. The one puppeteer controls all the puppets and does all the voices, using sticks to manipulate the puppets in front of an illuminated screen.
The lights dimmed and the characters appeared. A rapid stream of Turkish and lively buffoonery from the characters had the audience entranced, laughing, repeating lines, watching in amazement and shouting. For us the lack of language was tragic. We could certainly admire the skill in manipulating the puppets, and particularly in making one do a belly dance, but we had no idea of the story. I thought it was about a man who was too proud to bow low and unless he learnt he would never win the lady who appeared on her balcony and then flew off. 
The show ended suddenly for my imagined narrative, the junior audience poured out and we went over to the wall to look at the puppets on display there. We heard the other tourist chatting in what I took to be Turkish, and I envied him knowing the plot. We were about to go when a lady came up to me and asked me, in French, if I spoke French. I said I did so she then told us that she was a puppetry student, along with several others present. They take a course so that they can make puppets and do shows of their own. Queen Elizabeth had been there to see the museum and a puppet show recently. We were shown a photo of her with the puppeteer in a magazine, gracious as always, probably asking what the story was about. We all trooped up to see the workshop, which was very interesting, seeing how there is a little extra bit added so that the stick doesn’t slip out of place. Finally, we learnt that the story was about a man whose wife left him and the tribulations he had in choosing a new one! Apparently this style of puppetry was originally performed for adults and is traditionally pretty bawdy. We heard that some people have been shocked that it has retained its flavour and topics, albeit a little toned down to suit the audience age. After all this it only seemed natural that we would be invited to afternoon tea with Zeyd, the puppeteer, the students and everyone else at the museum. We had a fine time with so much noise that I couldn’t work out the French because I couldn’t hear it and Keith couldn’t work it out because the topics wandered around a bit too much. Everyone was very friendly, particularly one vivacious lady who showed us a photo of her cat, the image of Garfield, who weighs 30 kilograms. Finally the master puppeteer stood up, which signalled the end of good times, and like characters in a puppet play, we all exited stage left.
Keith said, “You’ve done it again,” meaning that another person had found that they just had to approach me for a chat. It is all rather mysterious, has happened all my life, and on this occasion I wasn’t even looking. Maybe I am some kind of human Bermuda triangle in reverse – a very handy thing to be for a traveller. Keith says a ‘a flame for a moth’ is a better analogy that at least makes sense. It still has the destructive bit in it though.On our return trip we stopped to go through the chalet that was given to Atatürk as a present and which he stayed in on his 18 visits to Bursa. It has several rooms decorated as they were, in formal but liveable style. It was free. A very friendly caretaker told us the origins of the different items of furniture and carpets. The Shah of Iran had given the most beautiful enormous carpet and the French Government’s dinner set and reclining nude were gifts not to be scoffed at too. Atatürk’s stuffed dog sat snarling at us from under a window.
We met the cultural tourist from the puppets at Atatürk’s house. He was Spanish, travelling for about six months and going in the opposite direction to us. We wished him well and strolled off to the covered bazaar.Bursa specialises in silks and towels – a strange combination of the exotic and the practical. We seemed to find lots of towels and very few silks, so after a less than exciting stroll through the furniture sections we abandoned the bazaar and headed for home. Once again we ran into the Spanish cultural tourist – maybe we are the only three in the village – a bizarre coincidence and unnerving for someone trying not to draw people into her orbit.
We had a poor meal in a dull café with no-one chatting to us, so it seemed that my powers had run their course for the day. Back in our hotel we tried to be asleep before our fellow user of the shared bathroom returned to spit loudly; it being both a fascinating and disgusting sound.
Plane trees lining many Melbourne streets are severely pruned annually to control their growth. İn western and northern Turkey you can see why, because they grow into huge, beautiful trees that are fantastic in a park or forest environment.
Nothing changes - the old wear black and the young wear black!
We didn't go into the Forestry Museum but we were interested in this large poster displayed in its fence. We saw many examples of this type of reaforestation in as we rode in buses in many parts of Turkey. The poster shows before and after shots of an area that has undergone planting of deforested slopes.
In stark contrast to the majority of towns we visited, particularly those in southern and eastern Turkey, Bursa is a very clean city. We actually saw several people using bins and people are employed to deal with stray litter.
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