Bursa

I did a quick two day trip to Bursa this week.  Bursa is about a 3 hour bus & ferry ride from Istanbul and was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, before Edirne and then Constantinople/Istanbul.  Bursa is an industrial city with car and other manufacturing along with silk production, cotton towel making and shadow puppets.  It is also in a mountainous area, so it is a winter playground for Istanbulites as it has a ski area.

There are three well-known mosque centers in the city.  I say “centers” as it is traditional for when there is a mosque to also have a few other buildings.  These buildings include a medressa, usually a long, single story building, which is a school; a soup kitchen; market stalls from which the proceeds supported the upkeep of the mosque; always a “fountain” for washing of the feet before entering the mosque to pray; and sometimes a hospital and tombs of the person who funded the mosque and sometimes a cemetery as well.

The first mosque I visited was in the center of the city and one of the oldest and is in the “Seljuk” style.  The Seljuks were the first Ottomans.   I can’t describe exactly what that “style” is, but it was an impressive mosque and was unique in that it had a fountain inside of the mosque as well as the ones outside.

 There was a silk “han” right there as well, and I walked through this looking at all of the silk scarves.  A han is the same as a caravanserai which I believe I wrote about before.  This one was a brick two story building with a beautiful open courtyard in the center.

From the days of the “silk road”, silk worms were brought into Turkey and the silk production developed here in Bursa.  We learned about the whole silk process while at the carpet demonstration we went to in Cappadoccia while on the Rick Steves tour.  Anyway, this “han” was where the silk cocoons were traded and now where silk products, mostly scarves, are sold.  There was a photography show of a famous Turkish photographer that was also on display there and I enjoyed the photos he had from all over Turkey and some of the Balkan region.

After nosing around in this area just a bit, I got my hotel room next to the market and left my bag and headed to another mosque area. The second mosque I visited, I didn’t actually go into the mosque, but into the tombs of the first sultan and his family, and walked through the beautiful setting there.  Nearby was a private museum with a fantastic collection of traditional clothing and jewelry that the man had collected over many years.  There were small rooms with the displays and I had to duck through the extended doorway (about three feet), into the room.  Not until I entered the room, would the light trigger on, as well as the turntables that each mannequin was standing on.  In this way, each costume was slowly visible, front and back.   The only thing I did not like about this museum was that I could not take photos and there were no postcards or book to purchase.  I did snap one photo on my way out of some of the painted wooden cart ends. 

After the museum I started wondering and found a street produce market.  I wondered through this, and then through the neighborhood.

 After all my exploring and sitting on the park bench as it was turning to dusk, I decided I would go to a Turkish Bath to warm up.  I had only been to the one when I was on the tour in Antalya, and I wanted to do it again.  It was also getting a bit chilly out and I thought the warmth of the bath would be nice.  I was right!  This bath was very different from the one I had already visited, in that there was no big marble stone slab in the center.  Instead there were two pools – both quite hot – from the far wall down the center of the room.  It did have individual water spigots like in the other bath along the two long walls, with small basins under them and bowls for dipping the water out.  Close to the door where two raised marble platforms for laying on, either to absorb the heat, or for use for the scrubbing and massaging.  I went all out again and got both the scrub and the massage. 

So first I used water from one of the basins and rinsed myself well, then went to one of the platforms where the attendant first scrubbed me removing a disgusting amount of dead skin, and then gave me a massage.  I think I have had the worst massages in my life at this and another bath I went to in Germany.  I would call it a quick, deep rubbing of my body – quite painful actually and in no way relaxing or healing or even any kind of positive, good feeling!  I have a recurring knot under my right shoulder blade and I don’t think her jabbing at it did it any good!  It certainly did not release the tension there!  The rest of the experience was great though.  I was able to stay in there as long as I wanted, so I soaked in the pools for a bit, sat in the outer room and cooled down a bit, before I soaked again.  It reminded me of Tenakee, except this building was much nicer!  Even with the crazy “massage”, it was a great experience and I left warm and content.  I stopped at a kebob place next to my hotel for dinner before going back to my room.

On Wednesday, I carefully orchestrated my visits to the remaining things I wanted to see.  But, as most carefully over planned things, it didn’t quite work that way, and I ended up enjoying myself immensely.  I started by visiting the third mosque – well, again, it was just the tombs as this mosque was under renovation. This was the “Green Mosque”, so called because of the tile on the original minarets.  But a couple of earthquakes and repairs have done away with the tiles on the minaret and the nearby tomb was redone in the 1700’s or so with blue tiles and was absolutely beautiful both inside and out. 

In the medressi here was an ethnographic museum that was high on my list to visit.  Again, a beautiful courtyard in the center and the displays in small rooms off of this courtyard, except one large domed room with stained glass in the upper arch.  I was thrilled I was able to take photos here.  Also, there were some of the shadow puppets I had read about.  These were developed as a result of two men who worked on the building of the green mosque who were always messing around and were finally beheaded by the sultan for slowing down the work.  After they were killed, the others created these puppets and continued the joking around between the two men, or so the story goes.  Here's a link I wish I had found before I went to Bursa, as I never did find this shop in the market, even with all my wandering through it! 

http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/ThraceMarmara/bursa/sights/karagoz_antikaci.html

I headed back to my hotel and market area with the intent to stop at the City Museum, which also has an ethnographic display.  But my timing was off and it was closed for the lunch hour.  I continued on back to the market behind the first mosque and near my hotel.  I was so taken by the market and surrounding areas that I never made it back to the City Museum! I figured real life was just as if not more intriguing than the past and I thoroughly enjoyed walking around and then sitting and watching the people. 

From the first shops, surrounding the mosque, many more have built up and the surrounding area is an incredibly huge shopping area.  I wandered through this more than once and still didn’t hit every avenue and “han”.  So there were these old brick and stone two story square buildings with courtyards in the center, and each one was for different types of goods.  So between these old buildings, on the outsides of them, were covered streets or walkways with shops along both sides.  In other words, it was a huge maze and sometimes I would find myself in a courtyard and other times I would realize I was in or outside of a building again.  Each pathway focused on different types of goods: clothing, shoes, jewelry, household goods, bedding, linens, etc., etc.  I am not talking about the types of markets I saw in South America or Mexico, although there were shops from one end of the spectrum to the other.   Some of these pathways were high-end stores with name brand – big name brands –and you could see the difference in the clientele in these different areas.  There was another area, actually a basement level, where clothes were heaped up on tables in the center – more like a Walmart!  The shop keepers were out, helping everyone find the sized and styles they wanted.  At one end of the market there were a few streets before there was a western style mall as well. 

On the far outskirts of the maze, the shops became smaller, there were more hawkers calling out their wares, and the streets were not covered.  I was wandering through and I heard a lot of noise coming from one direction, so I wandered over there.  It was the food and fish market.  The venders were calling out their wares: fish, nuts, dried fruits, candies, cheeses, olives, grapes, pomegranates, fresh figs, mandarin oranges, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc., etc.  I think it was probably not a daily market, as the tables were sent up on the street with little pathways between them into the permanent stores.  As I reached the outskirts of the food market, things got a bit seedier, so I knew it was time to turn around and head in the other direction.  What struck me the most about all of this, was that the streets and pathways were packed with people. There were areas were I could hardly pass as there were so many shoppers. 

I finally made my way back out of the market to my hotel, grabbed my pack and headed to the bus depot for my trip home.  I bought new shoes a few days before and I definitely have broken them  - and my feet – in!