Eskişehir

Maybe a month ago, CIEE took us on a trip to Eskişehir, a college town in between Istanbul and Ankara. Honestly, it was kind of a random place to take us, but CIEE is usually able to make things interesting against all odds.

We started things off with a lecture on urban planning in one of the town's three universities. The lecture itself wasn't particularly interesting , but it was neat to see how the new plans were being applied to the town. For instance, there's a small river running through and the town has built a whole bunch of lovely bridges along it, also adding peripheral green-space and gondolas. We took a boat ride along here at one point:

We hung out for a while on campus and then had a folk dance lesson. Of course, I was all about it while everyone else seemed quite unenthusiastic. A couple of my friends flat out refused to participate. But there was live music and exactly the style I love so I had a grand old time. Outside there was a small political demonstration related to education reforms that also included some traditional music.

Next, we went to a couple museums. First was a glass works museum that was really interesting even though it didn't really have to do with particularly Turkish artistic traditions. Then we went to a museum of meerschaum, a special white stone that is particularly abundant in the Eskişehir area. It's extremely porous and therefore very light. It's often used to make pipes and, I just read on Wikipedia, apparently changes color when used to smoke! In fact, the museum mostly consisted of pipes, amazingly and imaginatively carved into all kinds of designs. Never have I so desired a nicotine addiction:

After this we went to a cartoon museum. I had never been to one before and it was really fun. Most of the cartoons were biting and political, but there were some cute and sweet ones as well:

Also on this trip we went to a museum of the Republic (consisting almost exclusively of photographs of Atatürk) and a car museum. The car museum was quite built up, our guide telling us beforehand how Turkey had hoped to begin car manufacture, but the grand plan had unfortunately failed. The museum consisted of... the only car Turkey had ever been able to produce. One car. And when they brought it to the capital to be driven by the president at the time, they forgot to put gas in so it didn't even work :P

We had a great meal while we were there. I don't really know what it was, but it was something like bread soaked in meaty, creamy tomato sauce. I know it sounds kind of weird but it was DELICIOUS. And followed by chocolate pudding ;)

Before heading back home, we spent some time in Kent Park, which can pretty accurately be described as Fairyland. There was a castle and a pirate ship, a mini Noah's arc and big dinosaurs. It was great. I didn't do much running around there though because Tim and I were immersed in a profound conversation about the nature of consciousness:

From there we took the bus back home. A group of us got off early in order to go to Taksim, where we went to a karaoke bar and a Latin club!!! :DDD Here's a view from the bus home: