Nomadic Life

Left Istanbul early in the morning. Saying goodbye was tough. The city is beautiful and I will recommend it for the rest of my life. Also, I think I have rarely felt safer in a major metropolis.

Anyway we checked out of our awesome hotel for some fun as nomads in the Turkish countryside.

 We hopped on the bus for a 2 hour trip toward Bursa, a secondary city in Turkey. On our way we took a ferry boat that threatened to steal everyone's hats and also a mean pack of seagulls. On the ferry we enjoyed scenic views of the Sea of Marmara, right between the Aegean and the Black Seas.

Keeping in touch has been spotty due to 30 people trying to use only so much bandwidth. Not the best situation. We made a stop at the Osman Hamdi Hey Museum, the Turkish enlightenment leader. We saw his very impressive house as well as reproductions of many of his pieces of artwork. Check out his painting "training turtles". A work with well disguised criticism.

We travel for a few more hours and arrive in Bursa at the Karagoz theatre. This is a traditional shadow puppet theatre that is run as a passion project by an actor who has been on several national shows and soap operas. He is also a voice actor for radio and TV. This type of theatre is usually short moralistic or themed plays that tell about life and times in Turkey. The two main characters are Karagoz and Hacivet and they are friends that have opposing personalities (think the odd couple). The play that we watched was about 15-20 mins long and I videoed the whole thing so if you want to see it let me know. I may post it.

The actor put oink the whole thing using a backlight set of 6 puppets and did all of the voices himself. He only knew enough English to greet and thank us, so the whole thing was in Turkish. It was incredible though because I could understand the story with few problems. He told us about making the puppets (very thin leather that is painted) and how he writes and performs the plays.

We then head to Ulucami Mosque. Image a huge indoor square the size of a city block, with a 20 Ft diameter fountain underneath a glass dome that is about 70 Ft high. Huge 70ft high columns about every 30 Ft that are decoratively designed with Arabic script. There have been many timers in my life where I wished I read Arabic because it is such a beautifully written language. The calligraphy was mirrored most of the time so it was very aesthetically pleasing. All of the calligraphy is either prayers or names of prophets, religious leaders, or god (Allah). Most of the scripts have Allah hidden in them somewhere, so it may be a sign that says Muhammad but within the picturesque script is the name of god and sometimes written multiple times. After we leave the Mosque (which is still active even while we toured it). Many women and men were praying and one man was chanting the Koran to a group of about 20 men.

We left the Mosque to go shopping in yet another Bazaar. This time the SILK bazaar. I and a few others wanted to find Karagozx and Hacivat puppets so we asked Orhan, our guide, where we could find them. He was very helpful but not specific enough. We went right past and traveled around the actual silk bazaar and couldn't find the puppets. Finally, we got back to the silk bazaar and met up with another person on our tour who took us right to the shop that had the puppets. They were about 100 lira ($50) each and I opted for the cardboard ones, not as classy but I'm okay with it and I have the video anyway. Walked and shopped a bit more then finally met back up with the group to head to the hotel.

The hotel is kind of out of the way so not much local flavor so we hung out in the lobby but on the side of the building is a huge public park/ square (actually a trapezoid). This was set up for what looked like a massive wedding/concert/carnival all at the same time. At 9pm we realized that it was set up for Iftar. So I mentioned that it is Ramadan, the holy month for Islam. During thisa month everyone is supposed to fast for the daylight hours and then eat when the sun goes down. By the way it is summer here and the days are long about 18 hours off daylight. Impressive, right? It gets more impressive when you learn that they can't drink water, chew gum, or smoke (much bigger in Turkey than America). Organ said the not smoking was hardest. Anyway people were gathering to break their fast together. Then the carnival rides and tents started lighting up. It was awesome. And by that I mean I was in Awe.

The internet has been terrible for connectivity... sorry for the delay in postings.