7/16 – 7/17/13. Bursa, Turkey
The sun is setting over Bursa. Rocky crags atop Olympus Dag are falling into shadow; the mountain’s lower slopes, wreathed in pines, are fading into the horizon; the minaret of the Ulu Cami is glowing in the last light – and I finally begin to feel that this city was worth the trouble of getting here. Operating in a foreign culture – and particularly in an unfamiliar language – is at turns exhilarating and exhausting. When using public transportation, it is invariably exhausting.
After taking tram and metro lines to Istanbul’s vast and perplexing otogar yesterday, I exercised my Turkish successfully enough to secure a seat on an 11 AM bus. The ride took about three and a half hours, nearly two of which were spent escaping the massive urban sprawl of Istanbul. The ride was hardly scenic – by the time the long procession of concrete apartment buildings finally gave way to hills, we had nearly reached the outskirts of Bursa, and the sprawl began again. A ride on the auto ferry to Yenisehir enlivened the ride somewhat, as did my first sighting of the Lake of Nicaea, but I was glad to finally leave my seat, and dive into the now familiar confusion of the Bursa otogar. Having secured a seat on a bus headed into the city center, I eventually struck up a half-Turkish, half-English conversation with a university student seated across from me. This was very pleasant – but regrettably my Turkish and her English failed on the crucial point of determining just where I was supposed to get off the bus, and I missed my stop by more than a mile.
When planning the night before, I had guessed that I might get lost –I had nothing to go on but an email from the hotel instructing me to “ask for directions” and two maps putting the hotel in different places. To make matters worse, I was not sure whether Timurtash park and Cimturtash park, beside which the elusive hotel was apparently located, were identical. I wandered for a while, until I finally spotted the minaret of what I supposed to be the Ulu Cami, located a few blocks from my hotel. Fortunately, my hunch was correct – but I did not succeed in reaching the hotel until nearly 5, having spent an hour walking with all my luggage in a city with hills and drivers remarkably hostile to pedestrians.
And yet, once I finally put my luggage down and had a chance to look around, I find myself rather liking this corner of Bursa. My hotel is located just behind one of the gates in the old city wall, perhaps a block away from the mausolea of Osman and Orhan Ghazi, the first Ottoman Sultans. I visited these tombs first, and found myself struck more by the obvious veneration shown by Turkish visitors than by the architecture of the sepulchers themselves. The Sultans’ wooden coffins, elaborately chased in silver, were impressive enough, but the buildings that housed them were unimaginatively rebuilt in the nineteenth century.
The Ulu Cami, a massive building dating from the end of the fourteenth century, was much more rewarding. Based on older Selcuk models (as opposed to the dome-centered “Classical Ottoman style”), the building is square, projecting in its heavy walls the fortress-like solidity which has allowed it to survive for six centuries in the heart of this earthquake-prone city. The walls are unadorned save for elaborately carved panels around the windows and the magnificent main entrance. Inside, the mihrab, beautifully tiled in green and blue, immediately draws the viewer’s eye from every corner of a vast and densely pillared space.
Still more impressive were the Green Mosque (Yesil Camii) and tomb (Yesil Turbe), erected by Mahmut I in the early fifteenth century. Named for the emerald tile of their interiors, these buildings share a profound sense for symmetry. The Tomb, framed by cypresses, is approached by a long flight of stairs designed to emphasize the harmonious design of the building, and make the whole seem an extension of its beautifully tiled door. The mosque repeats the effect on a larger scale; the emerald green of its tiles, even more so than in the neighboring tomb, make its interior richer than that of any mosque I saw in Istanbul, hearkening back, perhaps, to an aesthetic sense quite different from that of the later Ottomans.
Satisfied with my sightseeing, I wound my way back to the hotel, ordered a kebab from a neighboring restaurant, and sat back to watch the sun set over Olympus Dag from my window.
Today, after wandering the city center for twelve hours, I find myself rather liking Bursa. I admire the city’s wooden Ottoman houses, their splintered balconies hanging over the cobbled streets. This is a place, moreover, that properly appreciates shade: hundreds of massive plane and cypress trees (the largest of which proudly bear a “municipally designated historic tree” plaque) line every avenue and yard. And from any point in the city, no matter how gray or grimy, one can see the green eminence of Olympos Dag, looming craggily at the end of every street. I had ample opportunity today to enjoy these features, as I walked from one end of Bursa to the other in search of the city’s widely scattered monuments. I began by wending my way downslope to the city’s main park, where an archaeological museum sits incongruously beside a large swimming pool and the soccer stadium. The museum’s directors, apparently unwilling to distract the public from the breaststroke or hooliganism, have opted to post only one sign, and that about twenty feet from their front door. When I finally arrived, the staff seemed rather startled to have an actual visitor. I was certainly the first that day, and quite probably the first that week – the single guard watched me incredulously, and I would swear that the man at the counter had half-forgotten where the tickets were. At any rate, the museum proved to have a respectable, if provincial, collection. Although one of its four rooms was “closed for maintenance” (a light bulb had gone out), and despite the fact that the employees were apparently parking their cars in the antique sculpture garden, I spent a pleasant half-hour looking over the artifacts.
My other reason for trudging four miles down towards the park district was to see the Muradiye complex, a cluster of tombs around a central mosque which Mehmet I built for the father he buried and the brothers he slew. Great cypress trees ring the site – but so, regrettably, does orange construction fencing. Nearly the entire complex is now “under restoration.” The workers, enjoying a tea break on the lawn, gave me a friendly nod before proceeding, presumably, to discuss when and if they should bother to unionize. After taking a few disconsolate pictures of the be-scaffolded buildings, I trudged back up the hill, and towards my other destinations. The only American chain restaurant I had noticed in the city center was, inexplicably, a Papa John’s, with a banner in the window proudly (if a touch irrelevantly) claiming “the best value in America!”
I now sought (after pausing briefly again at the Yesil Turbe to appreciate its lines in a different light) the Emir Sultan mosque, Bursa’s finest rococo building (that sounds like a coffee blend, doesn’t it?). I found it, eventually, but only after the midday call to prayer, which effectively barred me from entering. After snapping a few more disappointed pictures, I went further upslope in search of a mosque which my hotel’s boundlessly inadequate map placed somewhere above the Emir Sultan. To cut a long story short, I never found it, but was treated instead to a two-hour tour of Bursa’s less scenic “apartment block labyrinth.” Returning at length to my hotel, I was inclined to do some reading – but my feet were still itching, and there were two hours to kill before dinner, so I went out again in search of the Yildirim Beyazit complex, and finally found it – just in time to be excluded from the mosque by the evening call to prayer. Beyazit’s tomb, needless to say, was closed for restoration.
As I see it, the glass is half-full. I have seen three-quarters of the Archaeological museum, have glimpsed the outside of the Muradiye complex, walked past the Emir Sultan mosque, and got fairly close to going inside the Yildirim complex. And I only had to walk twenty miles to do it.
And now the sunset call to prayer is ringing, slightly staggered, from a dozen minarets, as the great bulk of Olympos Dag fades again behind the city lights. Bursa has not disappointed, but she continues to confound.