Uncategorized

Cumalikizik

(those should be Turkish i's with no dots on them in the title)...The first place Buket took me to in Bursa (I was really impressed with her ability to drive in Turkey--traffic is insanity), was Cumalikizik, an Ottoman village from the 1300's. The unique thing about this place is that it has been inhabited since then in the same buildings. Of course other cities are just as old, but stuff is usually torn down to build new development. These have been lived in for 700 years! The streets were narrow cobblestone corridors, hard enough to walk on, much less pull these horse/donkey-drawn carts up and down them like I watched an older man maneuver. When we entered the village there were a few tables set up with the locals selling some jewelry, honey, and other food products. In that sense it was there for tourists, but it didn't feel like a tourist trap destination. People were just going about their daily lives. One little girl did stop to offer us a well-rehearsed rattle-off-her-tongue history of the village in exchange for Buket's lira or two.

We stopped in a restaurant that the owner was very proud to show off. He showed us the upper rooms and insisted we take pictures of every corner.

Every house in Turkey had one of these solar-powered water heaters on the roof:

Buket's sweet-talked this lady at her door into letting us peek inside her courtyard so that she could show me the traditional setup of these houses. They all have a courtyard in the bottom where some of the living and working is done, but all of the rooms and actual living space is upstairs above this. I loved how it was built right into the rock on the ground.