A Weekend in Bursa

Sooo it's about time I posted about our trip to Bursa this weekend. I've been putting it off because I was afraid of having so much to write about that I'd forget it all. Let's just say it was a crazy weekend.

Background: Professor Shields had originally suggested going to Bursa with her since it was so close to Istanbul. When we told Murat, the friendly Turkish guy who lives two floors below us, that we were planning to go there, he got really excited and told us he would organize for all of us to stay at his friend's house. Murat was originally from Bursa and had come to Istanbul to study film. Seeing an opportunity to stay somewhere for free and stay with a Turkish family, we jumped at the chance. Murat rapidly called his friends and started organizing. As the date of departure came closer and closer, though, we hadn't heard anything from Murat and so were afraid that plans had fallen through. At the last minute, Murat called and told us that he had secured a place for us to stay that we were good to go; he would follow six hours later.

The Journey: We gathered our bags and walked to Taksim Square, a long walk without bags and even longer with them. We tried to make the 4 pm bus and missed it by a few minutes, so we had to wait another 1.5 hours.We finally got on the bus and left Yekta, who was watching over us like a worried mother and kept telling us to call her if anything happened. The bus ended up being a shuttle to the real bus station. There, we waited for close to an hour to get on the 6:15 bus - the bus finally arrived at 7:15. I guess that's just Turkish time. The bus ride was very eventful. About an hour into the bus ride (and three hours we had left the flat) I told Kelly, who was sitting next to me, that I had serious deja vu. I could swear I had seen the buildings we were passing, but I could not remember from where. Sure enough, twenty minutes later we passed Sabanci University where we had been the day before. It had taken us 3 1/2 hours to get to the same place we had reached in less than an hour the day before. At that point, all the Americans on the bus (i.e. our group of 7). Bursa was supposedly three hours away, but our journey there had already taken more than three hours, and we weren't even halfway there. We tried calling Yekta, who had stayed behind in Istanbul, to tell her how ridiculously long we had taken to get to the same point we had been to the day before in less than half the time, but as soon as Kelly took out her phone the bus attendant came and yelled at her in Turkish while vigorously pointing his hand at the phone. Apparently, the Turks have the ridiculous notion that using a cell phone while on a bus will interfere with the braking of the bus (not that the Turkish drivers use brakes anyway).

Soon after, the bus pulled into a road that ended in the sea - we had to get on a ferry to get to Bursa. At that point, we lost it laughing - our trip thus far had been absolutely ridiculous. Not only where we on a bus to go stay with the family of a friend of a friend of a person we had just met in a country where we didn't speak the language, but we had taken more than 3 hours to reach a place that had taken 45 minutes the day before, gotten yelled at for "interfering with the brakes" by using a cell phone, tried to figure out where in the world we were using a guide from 1978 and a set of 6 maps that some genius editor had decided to include instead of one full map (one of the Turkish guys sitting next to us said the maps we used belonged to Marco Polo), and ended up on a ferry that we didn't know was part of the trip. For all we knew, the ferry would end up in Greece or go back to Istanbul. And it only gets better.

We got off the bus and onto the ferry, still recovering from laughing so hard on the bus (the Turks were giving us disapproving glances), we sat and decided to get some Turkish tea. Within the first two minutes, a man dressed in black pants and a black shirt with hair greased back approached us and asked if he could sit down with us. We were used to this - after all, Turks are very friendly people who love to talk to foreigners about their country - but this time was different. After inquiring about what we were doing in Turkey and where we were from, this Turk tried to buy us tea and asked us (and by us, I mean the men of the group) what we were doing that night. He then patted Edward's hands and then rested his hand on Clayton's leg for an extended period of time. In Turkey, it is very common for male friends to hold onto each other's arms and generally be very physically expressive with each other, but what this guy was doing was pushing the boundaries. I tried to excuse myself from the awkwardness and leave the table, and Edward came running after with me and said "Rescue me - we're on the gay cruise." I broke down laughing again at the ridiculousness of the situation again. We got even more creeped out when the ferry finally arrived and we found out that Ahmed - the guy who had been hitting on Edward and Clayton - got on the same bus as us. Here's a picture - guess who the creeper is:



After leaving the ferry, the bus went for an hour before finally arriving at the main bus terminal in Bursa. I had managed to sneak in a phone call to the Turks who were receiving us without interfering with the breaks, and told them that we were going to be a little late. Selman, Murat's best friend, assured us he'd be there. And sure enough, when we got off the bus, a group of three Turks came to us and asked in a curious, apprehensive voice, "Americans?" We had arrived in Bursa.

The Turks introduced themselves - there was Selman, who I had talked to on the phone, Taner, and Eyup. We would be staying at Eyup's house that night. Selman spoke some English - apparently, he learned it all by watching Seinfeld - and Taner and Eyup spoke as much English as we spoke Turkish - practically none. The Turks led us to another bus that we had to wait for and we received an unexpected surprise - Ahmed, the same guy in the black shirt and greasy hair was also waiting for the same bus. By this point, the guys in the group were very creeped out and unsure of what to do. I communicated to Eyup and Taner that Ahmed, who had chosen to stand right next to our seats and by this time was tapping Edward and Clayton's shoulder trying to ask them what they were going to tonight, was bad news. Here's a picture of him with Edward pretending to be asleep:


Finally, the guy got the hint that we weren't gay and didn't want to hang out with him, not that we were worried - Selman had whispered to us in English that he was our protection from Ahmed. Once Ahmed was out of the picture, we felt more relaxed and after a few minutes, got off the bus. We got off the bus in what looked to be a lower income neighborhood. After walking a bit, the seven of us were shown into a house where we met Eyup's mother and gave her the baclava we had bought for her earlier. Then we all crowded into an oddly shaped rhombus room smaller than my dorm room back home. As if ten people in the room weren't enough, three more Turks showed up and introduced themselves. They served us some wine and soda, a popular mix here, and told us about themselves in whatever English they knew and whatever we Turkish we knew. Apparently, American rock and roll bands from the 50s and 60s (think the Beatles, Buddy Holly and, of course, Elvis) are a big deal in Bursa, and three of the guys were in a rock and roll band. We had a good time talking with the Turks but the excessive amount of people and smoking (Turks smoke like chimneys - its literally one after another) that some of us had to go outside. There, we discovered the toilet.

Toilets in Turkey might be one of the things that didn't get included in Ataturk's broad plans for modernization. here's a picture:


For some reason, Turks continue to use what is called a "Turkish" or "Squat" toilet. This device is merely a modified hole in the ground - an porcelain surface that is inclined so that any liquids can flow to a hole found at one end of it. Instead of water pipes or flushing, a separate faucet is installed on one of the walls with a bucket underneath. When you are done doing your business, you are supposed to fill the bucket and wash the toilet. Not only is this inconvenient and inefficient, but dripping and pouring the water makes the floor wet (and no one likes walking into a wet bathroom). To complicate things even more, toilet paper is usually not provided.

This was what we found out when one of us decided to use the toilet. To make things worse, the toilet was broken and it smelled - well, let's just say it smelled unfortunate. This wasn't as bad for guys, but for girls the situation was bad. Thankfully, we viewed the situation somewhat comically.

When we finally decided to get some rest, the Turks left and we tried to arrange ourselves on the two couches, the twin sized bed and the floor. The seven of us were relatively comfortable until three of the Turks came back and told us that they were also going to stay with us - it was a tight fit. Here's Kelly, Edward and Amanda trying to fit on one couch, with Kevin's feet sticking in and Clayton on the floor. I slept on the floor as well.


The next morning, we were all up early since we couldn't sleep very long in our tight sleeping quarters. Selman, Taner and Eyup then led us on a walking tour of Bursa where we visited the Yesil Cami, or Green Mosque, and Ulu Cami, among other things. Here's a picture of the Turks and us in Ulu Cami, a huge mosque in the heart of the city: (from the left: Taner, me, Amanda, Edward, Kevin, Clayton, Kelly, Selman, Orhan, a guy I don't know, and Eyup)



Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman empire and so is the resting place of its first sultan, Osman I. We visited his mausoleum:


And a view of the city.


After grabbing some lunch we went to a Hamam - a Turkish bath. It looked like a mosque with many domes - here's a look from the outside:



The hamam was built was in 1555 by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. We couldn't take any pictures inside because of the humidity, but it was incredible. The bath is designed in a circular fashion, with a swimming pool with naturally heated spring water in the center and nooks around the circle with running faucets. The faucets pour hot water into a basin and you are supposed to use buckets and take water out of the basin and bathe yourself with them. Obviously, we had no idea how to do any of this, so our Turkish friends showed us. And by showed us, I mean bathed us. Eyup, one of our friends, took some soap and soaped me up. They then got a mit with a surface that felt like medium grade sandpaper and started scraping my arms. I could see my skin peeling off. After having been exfoliated, we swam in the bath. We also got shown into a room with a warning, "one or two minutes! dangerous!" The room was hot - really hot. We saw a sign on the wall that said it was 83 degrees centigrade - 180 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as we walked in the heat hit us, and it was so hot that we could not breathe through our nostrils because it sting. After two minutes, my hair felt like it was boiling, my lungs were hurting, and my heart was pumping faster than I'd ever felt it. We decided we had to get out of there before we died and told the Turks in there that we were leaving - they laughed at us. Once we left, we chilled for a little bit. While I was walking around the pool a Turkish guy sitting in another hot pool called, appropriately, the Lion's Mouth - some very hot spring water came out of a lion's mouth placed on the wall. After talking in my very basic Turkish to the men in there, they motioned for me to get under the fountain. The water was scalding, and after only a few minutes my back was numb from pain. One our Turkish friends came and communicated with us that we should get out because the water was dangerously hot. After a while, we decided to get out before our skin fell off because of the humidity. In the cool-off room, a man wrapped us in three different towels - here's a picture with Taner:


After the hamam, Taner came over and told us that he had a surprise for us. Then he took us on a taxi ride down to a new house we hadn't been to yet. What we found was incredible.

Taner's entire family (and extended family) had shown up to welcome us into their house. After letting us put our stuff in one of their rooms, they showed us to the terrace of their building where they had a beautiful view of Bursa and the mountains surrounding it. It reminded me of San Jose, CR - picture:


Then their family sat us down at a table with vines stretching over us and treated us to the best meal we've had in Turkey so far. First, they served us fruit - apricots, cherries, erik (green sour plum-like fruit from Turkey) and bananas. Then they served us delicious tomato soup with bread, followed by a plate of "cigar pies", a kind of Turkish empanada rolled up like a cigar with melted cheese in the middle. Then they brought us two different types of salad and an entree of cooked eggplant stuffed with ground meat with pilav on the side. For a second entree, they served lahmacun, a "Turkish pizza" of sorts. The dough is covered with different spices and ground beef; lettuce and tomatoes that have been chopped up are then placed on top of the dough, and the entire thing is rolled up kind of like a burrito. Here's a picture of us at dinner (thanks Kevin for the pic):


By that time, we were all stuffed from eating so much food. They insisted on bringing us some Turkish coffee and cay (Turkish tea). By the end of it, some of us were laying down trying to digest all the food we had eaten. Selman then told us that we would be moving to Orhan's house to spend the night - we prepared for another adventure at another Turkish home, only to discover that Orhan's house was actually on the first floor of the building. Turks like the ones we stayed with like living in the same building, so each floor of the structure we were in belonged to one family that was connected to the other ones on the adjoining floors. The result is very close relationships between families, and we found out that Orhan and Taner, who we had thought were just friends, were actually cousins.

Once we had moved our stuff to the first floor, we hung out in a room with Taner, Selman, Eyup, and Taner's cousins. It was a good experience - obviously, neither of our sides knew enough of each other's language to speak to each other, so we resorted to the obvious choice: music. We would play American songs for them and they would play Turkish songs for us. By the end of the night, Taner (who I had grown closest to of the three Turkish friends) and I were singing and strumming (on an air guitar, of course) along to Hotel California, Old Time Rock and Roll, Down on the Corner and other classics. Our hosts continued to be extremely gracious and hospitable, and continued to serve us Coke and bring us sunflower seeds to chew on.

By 1 am, we were all tired - the Turks were falling asleep and we were ready to go to sleep so we could leave early the next morning to Istanbul. Our hosts showed us to a room where we all slept comfortably (as opposed to the previous night). The next morning, we woke up and the Turks treated us to another feast for breakfast: hardboiled eggs, fruit, french fries, cheese, sausage, bread, jam, and more.

Here's a picture of breakfast (thanks Clayton):



After breakfast, Taner's dad offered to drive us to the bus terminal for our bus back to Istanbul. Taner, who I had talked to about soccer the day before (we both agreed we were Galatasaray fans) gave me his personal banner for the team - I was very touched that this guy who I had met 36 hours before was already giving me such a personal gift:



Once at the bus terminal, the Turks helped us buy our tickets. We said our goodbyes and hugged each other. One last group picture:


All of us were amazed by our weekend - we never expected these people and their families who had never even heard of us to take us in and treat us like their family. It was an amazing example of Turkish hospitality. When the bus finally departed, the four Turks who had brought us to the bus terminal stood outside our windows and, jokingly, pulled out a bunch of tissues and waved them at us as if they were crying.

Obviously, it was a joke, but it reminded us that we had actually become good friends with these guys despite not speaking their language in only 36 hours. Five hours later, we arrived back at our flat in Istanbul. And that was our weekend.