Travel Blog: Bursa, Turkey (June 12, 2008)

The drive north this morning showed us shifting landscapes once again. Sunburned hills covered with olive and oak turned to rice paddies and poplars, and the verges of the highway were fringed with green grass once again.



We arrived in Bursa, known as 'green Bursa' during the Ottoman days for its many peach orchards. It's a hilly city in its older neighborhoods, with hair-raising traffic on the narrow, twisting cobbled streets that are lined with sycamore trees and old wooden Ottoman houses overhanging the street with long bay windows on the second story. Tiny shops stand crowded cheek-by-jowl along the streets, selling pastries, electronics, fast food, wedding and prom dresses, and appliances, and in between tiny gardens and vacant lots are overgrown with rosebushes and the luxuriant green of grapevines.

As we headed further into the old city, we saw an old man leading a mule down the sidewalk, large basket panniers slung over its back, piled high with bright red cherries.

Lunch was at a restaurant built inside a medieval soup kitchen associated with a nearby mosque (for the feeding of the poor), with giant pottery storage vessels still embedded in the floor of the downstairs dining room, which was once the cellar. The floors were tiled with the turquoise-colored tiles characteristic of this city,and the doorways and windows were richly frescoed with floral Ottoman motives in reds and blues.


The food was excellent--a creamy tomato soup sprinkled with grated white cheese that resembled Jarlsberg; a mixed salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil; flatbread piled high with thin slices of spiced kebab meat and served with tangy yogurt and tomato sauce; and for dessert, sweet ripe watermelon slices.


After lunch, we walked across the street, to the grounds of a 14th-century mosque set in a lush garden planted with palms, magnolia trees, roses, pansies, and pink hydrangea. The air was humid but cool under cloudy skies, and threatened rain.

At the entrance to the mosque, we removed our shoes and the women donned headscarves or hats. A clean-shaven man in his thirties welcomed us into the mosque. He was dressed in an Oxford button-down shirt and blue jeans, and had a warm smile. He turned out to be the imam--the Muslim minister in charge of this historic mosque.


With Erkal translating, he gave us a brief explanation of the tenets of the Muslim faith and of the exquisite 14th-century blue and green tiles and Arabic calligraphy decorating the domes and arches inside the mosque. Then he demonstrated how he calls the faithful to prayer five times daily, singing the haunting summons in a beautiful tenor that echoed off the high central dome of the main hall.


After our tour of the mosque, we wandered through the manicured gardens, and visited the beautiful domed tombs of the early Ottoman sultans and their family members, each small shrine adorned with gorgeous tilework and colorful frescoes.


Then it was off to two more medieval Ottoman mosques, each dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, including the Green Mosque, the most famous mosque in Bursa. It was an enormous building with an elaborately carved marble façade.

As we entered the mosque (and I was fumbling with tying my headscarf into place), a group of elderly Turkish ladies were just exiting. They surrounded me, patting my arms and shoulders, smiling and saying something in Turkish and laughing.


At first, I wondered whether I'd tied my headscarf wrong and was receiving gentle correction, but then I heard what they were saying--Hoshgeldiniz, hoshgeldiniz: "Welcome, welcome."


Inside, the 15th-century mosque had the same impact as one of the great European cathedrals (and like the cathedrals, the interior was filled with scaffolding and repairs and renovations were in full swing). The polished pine floors were laid with carpets, and there were crowds of people swirling through the vast space, some praying, others taking photographs and chasing after toddlers, who seemed to take entrance into the mosque as a signal to dash off as fast as their little legs could take them.


At one point during Erkal's explanation of the history of the mosque, we were surrounded by a crowd of very young children, who were staring at us, fascinated.


After visiting the mosque, it was off to the medieval bazaar. Bursa is the center of Turkey's silk industry, and part of the bazaar is devoted to selling products made from silk. At this point, there were several mighty (and startling) claps of thunder, and a torrential downpour began.


We fled for the shelter of a multi-storied medieval bazaar building, which was an arcaded set of small shops built around a central courtyard garden. This was the silk bazaar, and safe and dry from the rain outside, we spent about a half-hour wandering around the four sides of the arcade, looking at the displays of scarves, ties, tablecloths, blouses, pillowcases, skirts, napkins, and shawls, many of them embroidered and all very reasonably priced.


It was a dangerous place to be in possession of a credit card!


Finally, it was time to return to the hotel. After a hair-raising drive with the bus through the extremely tight medieval streets, the rain still coming down in sheets and turning the cobbles into rushing streams, we arrived at a huge and gracious hotel built in the 1920s.


One of the promised luxuries was a Turkish bath, fed by a thermal hot spring located on the hotel grounds, and tonight, dinner wasn't being served until 8pm, so we had about 2.5 hours to take advantage of the bath.


It was heavenly. The bath itself was free to hotel guests, though the extra services (massage, scrubbing, and shampooing) were charged at appropriately extortionate rates.


First, I changed into a bathing suit and hotel-supplied bathrobe, and walked to spa and bath complex, located at one end of the hotel.


Erkal was already there, soaking blissfully in the hot water, and he explained a few things as I hesitantly pushed open the massive wooden doors leading into the bathing chamber, and dipped my feet in the mandatory disinfectant foot bath.


The bath was located in a huge domed chamber, pierced by dozens of tiny skylights, and floored and walled completely in marble. In the middle of the chamber, right under the dome, was a huge round marble pool filled chest-deep with hot greenish mineral waters. Along the sides of the bath were ornate ceramic basins and spigots, with hammered silver dishes, for scrubbing down and dousing one's self with cold water when overheated.


At the back of the chamber was what looked like an ornamental fountain, with a shallow marble basin and steaming hot water pouring down from a broad, sculpted spout. That turned out to be the caldarium, and the large pool was the tepidarium. The frigidarium, or cold-water bath, was adapted into marble shower stalls on either side of the caldarium fountain.


The Turkish hamam, or baths, are modeled on the ancient Roman baths, and even the basins and benches looked like the ones we had seen at the various archaeological sites we visited.


In any case, it was blissfully decadent. I soaked until I was pleasantly boneless, crawling out of the hot water at intervals to pour basins-full of cool water over my back and shoulders, and then I oozed back to my room to dry off and relax before dinner.


Not too many of the other folks on the tour took advantage of the bath--one couple arrived just as I was leaving, and then I saw our driver and our assistant driver come in.


Tomorrow, we're off (once again, way too early in the morning) to Istanbul for the last leg of our trip...