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The Old Town of Eskişehir.
We walked back again to the downtown but this time to another neighborhood which is well preserved. On the way we tried to enter the Cumhuriyet Tarihi Müzesi but it was unfortunately closed on mondays (as Turks would say: maalesef).
When we arrived, we understood we it's called “Old Town”. I have to say, it is very well preserved. The plaza is preserved as ‘antique' and only opened for pedestrians. Occasionally some vehicles do cross the plaza, like a motorcycle, but other than that, it breathes an air of live and rest from corner to corner.
All houses are kept historical and you actually feel that you are in another century. For example, you see the Osmanlı Cafe or Ottoman Café where Nargile or the arabic smoking pipe is offered. It's also common to see cats sleeping in the restaurant's chairs.
Going uphill of Eskişehir.
I always have the opinion that when food is offered in the menu, a picture of the meal comes very handy because it suggests how your meal is going to be presented to you. This tactic, of course, help your costumers to decide which meal would like as they could already smell it. Unfortunately, this could be also misused or overdone and take the prestige out of the restaurant.
We headed later upwards into this plaza street to find many many stores opened with all kind of souvenirs, even if these streets were somehow empty. The main reason was the date that we visited: it was Monday and it was Winter.
Camii and the museum.
At Kurşunlu Camii & Külliyesi we visited the mosque and more crafts and arts sold inside the courtyard. It was very peaceful and covered with ice in some parts of the garden. I was truly delighted with the drawings in the mosque and how them fit so well with the arch of the structure itself.
Saeli found an illustration of a cultural center called Beylerbeyi Konağı, hanged in the wall of a house outside the mosque. Here we saw and compared the linguistical similarities between other existing Turk languages: Turkish, Turkmen, Azerbaijan and many other.
After seeing a small mosque called Orta Işık Camii, we headed upwards again but we understood that there wasn't anything left to see or no distance left to run (which reminds me to the sad song from Blur). Some of the houses were already in bad condition so we didn't really found anything there. Then, we headed back to take a bus (line 11) into our next destination.
May it come easy for you!
Listen up: when we stepped into the bus, we explained to the bus driver that we wanted to pay with money instead of the normal bus card. (All this was done in Turkish… so Saeli was the one who spoke to the driver; I'm still learning 🙂 ). But the bus drive said that, well, we can't do that. And even if we showed that we do have the money, he didn't wanted to accept it.
Instead, he said that it would be no problem that we just sit back there, he will “invite us” the trip. And he did; we sat there enjoying the free ride. Saeli and I were so thankful of this kind of people. When we stepped out, all that we could say was Kolay gelsin which means that “may it come easy for you”.
