Istanbul, hazy, high 20s.

Last night here in Turkey. It was a nice last day. Ann, Cathey and I took an organized tour to Bursa. We thought that it might have been a little pricey, but it was worth it. There were only 7 of us in the little mini-bus, the three of us and a family from Pakistan who weren’t the most friendly folks ever. We tried to engage them in conversation, but after enough half smiles and uninterested “Oh, really?”s we took the hint and kept to ourselves. Our guide, another Mehmet, spoke fluent English with a heavy, heavy north London accent that amused us all day long when he’d make comments like “And that’s when the Sultan really bollocked it up.”

He offered us quite a few opinions – he said if he were president, he’d let Cyprus go. “We’re pouring 10% of our economy into that place, and why? So drug dealers and money launderers can hide out there in nice houses?” He also echoed the rather prevalent belief that Turkey won’t ever get into the EU because of Europe’s Islamophobia, which I’ve heard before. There was also the usual conspiracy theory about Princess Diana at one point – she was pregnant, a royal couldn’t possibly have an Arab baby. We all just nodded a lot at that one.

One comforting thing he told me was that the shoeshine boys rip off everyone, not just tourists. He told me a couple of his own stories, and then I felt better about my own experience yesterday.

Our route took us away from Istanbul via the first of the Bosphorus bridges (if I’m not mistaken it’s just “Bosphorus Bridge – Bogazici Köprülü”) We shot over on one of the spacious new toll roads that goes the entire way to Ankara, but we got off at the little port of Eskihisar to take the car ferry across the sea of Marmara to the town of Yalova. From there, it was about another hour to Bursa.

Bursa, it turned out, was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle on this trip, and I really enjoyed the trip. Our first stop was the oldest surviving Ottoman village, a place called Cumalikzik. The architecture was stunning, simply because we hadn’t really visited a mountain town at all while in Turkey. My first thought was something to the effect of “Cumalikzik and Kakopetria – separated at birth?” There were a lot of similarities between this Ottoman village and the little town in the Troodos Mountains we visited in Cyprus.

Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman state after they emerged as the dominant power after the Selçuks lost their grip on Anatolia. It covers more square miles than Istanbul – being in an earthquake-prone zone, most of the buildings are only about three floors high. The old buildings in Bursa are older than Istanbul – from Bursa, the Ottomans moved their capital up to Edirne (the old Adrianople) and finally to Istanbul when they conquered the city in 1453.

We had lunch – regional food from Bursa, which may have been the first regional cuisine we’d had here – at the former soup kitchen at the mosque of Murad III, who was the father of Murad IV, the sultan who went slightly insane in his later years and had this bizarre tendency to run through the streets in his underwear and randomly stab people.

The mosques in the city are as varied from each other as they were from the ones in Istanbul. We went into the great mosque – Ulu Cami, which was built around the house of a woman who refused to sell – there’s a fountain now where her house used to be, because the Sultan decreed that mosques need to be free of dispute, so the fountain would prevent people from praying on the spot. There was a lot of stunning calligraphy – so different from anything we’d seen in Istanbul – all over the mosque.

The Green Mosque, built by Murad the First, father of Faith Mehmet, who conquered Istanbul, was completely different. The predominant feature inside – as the name suggests – was a lot of emerald green tiles and decorations. Murad’s tomb is across the way, and it’s called the Green Tomb (Yesil Türbe).

Quick trip up the mountains to an overlook of Bursa – beautiful in its own space – and then we headed back for Istanbul the way we’d come. The sun was setting as we came into town back over the Faith Sultan Mehmet Bridge near Bosphorus University. Nicer still, we didn’t seem to be expected to tip our guide or driver, so there was no ugliness of the sort that accompanied our arrival into Istanbul.

We all split up – Ann and Cathey went out shopping, I went to check my e-mail and then wandered around Istiklal for a bit. Ran into Cathey and we went to dinner at the little cafe overlooking the city where we went for Barb’s birthday. It was, as we both said, a great way to end the trip.

I’ve wondered back and forth, especially in the wake of a bunch of questions from home – “Why are you coming back? I thought you wanted to stay?” All told, I have no regrets. I feel like I saw everything I wanted to see, and as I’ve said many times over, I’m ready to go home. I feel more at ease about this because I know I’ll be back – I will be coming back to Turkey, more than once. And it’s been a great first visit.

Tags: anatolia, bosphorus, bursa, islam, istanbul, mosques, turkey