Bursa’s Grand Mosque and the Silk Market

February 24, 2015

It was another cold and wet morning in Bursa as we set off for the Grand Mosque. I wondered how ‘grand’ was the mosque, and was it going to take my breath away like the Blue Mosque did the day before. The Grand Mosque was our tour guide, Mustafa’s favourite mosque because it features one of the greatest examples of Islamic calligraphy in the world. Written by the famous Ottoman calligraphers of that period, the calligraphy was featured on walls and columns, even on large and small plates around the interior of the mosque.

The Ulu Camii also features a şadırvan, a fountain where worshipers could perform ablution ritual before prayers. How often do you see a fountain in the middle of the mosque?

The high glass dome over the fountain captures the natural light during the day, casting a soft light, playing an important role in illuminating the interior of the mosque. Coupled with the rain softly falling outside and the serenity of the mosque, I felt peaceful. The mosques we’ve been to so far in Turkey are far more magnificent than the ones we have back home, and held so much history. We were given some time to walk around the mosque to explore, since it was just us in there and it wasn’t prayer time. For that, I was grateful to get some quiet and peace of mind to sneak some prayers to the Almighty.

Alas, we had to leave the peace and tranquility of the mosque and back out into the cold, wet weather outside. Just a stone throw away from the Grand Mosque was the Bursa’s Silk Market. Bursa was, a long time ago, famous for its silk. The Koza Han, built in 1451 was once the centre of the silk trade.

The 564-year-old building was home to many shops selling silk shawls, scarves, fabrics and the likes of it. In the centre of the han was a mini mosque. I didn’t know this at that time, only found out when my friend Abhi (do check out his blog, this dude’s travelling a hell lot, and his blog is awesome!) went to the same place as I did and said it was a mosque. Aha, we learn something new from one another every day.

It was winter time when we visited Koza Han in December, hence it was calm and quiet, with not many tourists around. Everywhere you turn, there’ll be a little shop selling their silk wares. Be careful when you are buying though, as not all the silk scarves are real, and/or made in Turkey. We were brought to a shop where the shopkeeper explained how to differentiate shawls that were made of pure silk, a combination of both silk and cotton and those that were just pure cotton. There was one shawl that caught my attention, alas, it was made of pure silk and handmade in Bursa hence it cost an arm and a leg. While the women were busy picking out scarves and shawls to buy as gifts, I picked another one that caught my eye. A really pretty and simple pure silk scarf made in Bursa that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg like the other one, but still pretty expensive. At least I had a scarf to cover my hair when I enter mosques instead of depending on my hoodie.

Here’s a tip: When in Turkey, ladies, bring a scarf with you.

Men, be prepared to wait a hell of a long time for your women to be done shopping for scarves. In the mean time, take a seat outside the shops, or at any of the seats in the garden on the ground floor and enjoy a cup, or two, or ten of Turkish tea or coffee. Rumour has it that if you’re lucky, someone might read your fortune from the leftover coffee grounds in your cup. Didn’t managed to get my fortune read, but let me know if you are ever in Koza Han and got your fortunes read.

Feeding polite seagulls enroute to Bursa

February 19, 2015

Turkey was indeed a special place. It was one country right smack in between Europe and Asia. We’ve spent a good part of the day in Istanbul, situated at the European part of Turkey and we were heading towards Bursa, the Asian part.

It was already more than halfway through the day and my eyelids felt like sacks of stones hanging from the top part of my face. I looked out of the window and saw a port and a ferry boat parked at the edge of that port. When the bus drove through the port and literally onto the ferry boat, my eyes instantly perked up. NO WAY.

Our bus were one of the many cars, trucks and other buses parked on the ferry service that would take us away from Istanbul across the Marmara River and onward to our journey into Bursa. The journey across the river took 40 minutes and we were very well occupied throughout.

Accompanying us on our 40-minute ride were a flock of seagulls. They flew patiently alongside the ferry and waited for tiny chunks of food to be tossed at them.

This is a Simit. A round, savoury, Turkish bread encrusted with sesame seeds and best eaten fresh off the oven. It is essentially, a @sesamebagels. Geddit, geddit? Now do follow me on IG! :P They were 1 Turkish Lira (1 TL = ~ SGD 0.55) each and were as big as my face. I bought some to feed the seagulls, and as much as the seagulls loved them, I did too.

And were they polite! Unlike crows that peck at you if you didn’t give them food, the seagulls take their share and back away when they see you didn’t have any more food to throw at them. Of course, there were snatchers and I felt terrible for this one seagull who didn’t manage to catch the three chunks I threw at them so I made sure he caught the fourth one. I swore he squawked his thanks my way before flying away.

People old and young were seen tossing simit pieces to the seagulls, visibly entertained by the whole experience. Across the horizon, the sun began to set. By the time the ferry reached its destination, everyone had boarded the bus and ready for the 2-hour drive to Bursa.

Sultan Ahmet Mosque : Introduction to mosques in Turkey

February 17, 2015

After lunch was our afternoon prayer time. Mustafa, our tour guide took us to the Sultan Ahmet Camii, or better known as the Blue Mosque. I’ve seen pictures and had a vague idea of how big the mosque was. As I walked under a heavy iron chain and crossed the threshold, I remember gasping and my aunt who was right behind me muttered, “SubhanAllah.” Which meant, ‘God is great’. Indeed, God is great.

My pictures, or any other pictures I’ve seen on Google couldn’t justify how grand the mosque was. The sight just literally too my breath away and this was just outside. Walking through the mosque grounds reminded me of the time long ago I was in Masjidil Haram in Makkah. It was cold, the floor was marble white and the mosque loomed before me. Of course, the Blue Mosque is little compared to the grand Masjidil Haram.

The mosque was widely known as the Blue Mosque because of the colour of the tiles adorning the interior of the mosque.

Apparently, every part of the mosque is symbolic. Back in the day, only the sultan was allowed to enter the court of the mosque on horseback. All ye commoners walked. The iron chain that hangs in the upper part of the entrance to the mosque grounds was placed there so that the sultan had to lower his head every time he entered the grounds to avoid being hit. There is no greater power than God, even the sultan, revered by man, wasn’t spared.

Magnificent isn’t it?

Even when we were to visit many other mosques in the coming days, the Blue Mosque had a special place in my heart because none of the other mosques blew my mind away like this one.

Fresh off the plane and straight into the heart of Istanbul

February 14, 2015

Istanbul greeted us with a cold, wet welcome that morning when we landed at the Istanbul Ataturk International Airport. I was exhausted from the 10+ hours journey where I had little sleep. But we weren’t heading to the hotel straightaway. It’ll be a whole day of exploring before we’d get to make our way to the hotel. I didn’t know how I was going to stay awake.

Our first stop was the Topkapi Palace, the primary residence of the Ottoman sultans for about 400 years of their 624-year reign. The architecture was marvellous, colourful tiles lined the high domes, marble flooring paving our way across the gardens. We got to lay our eyes on artifacts that we read in the Quran and other Islamic history books. Those were really eye opening and so protected, we can’t even bring a camera in.

By the time we were done exploring the grounds of the Topkapi Palace, most of us were ravenous. We were brought to a restaurant not so far from the Palace and that was our first introduction to Turkish cuisine.

The Turks love their vegetables and soup. Throughout our 11 days in Turkey, our meals were never complete without a garden salad or soup, usually tomato or lentil. Our main course was usually chicken, beef and the occasional fish. I love the smoked meat flavour of kebabs and the freshness of their yoghurt and hummus.

I loved the cobbled paths of Istanbul and how everyone seemed so warm and friendly. But this was just a tiny introduction to Turkey, in comparison to what we would be exposed to in days to come.

ISKETAMBOLA: Things you need to know.

February 4, 2015

As promised, February is going to be dedicated to the Turkey trip I went with my family last December. It’s going to be different from LEZGOJapan because I travelled on a package tour. I never liked going on packaged tours, I’m guessing so do my parents. Because we had Grandma with us this time, it was wiser to engage a tour.

Why Isketambola?

I am terrible at coming up with quirky hashtags and titles, but I remembered the word Isketambola being used quite a few times on TV very, very long time ago. I’ve always thought I’d use that word when I get the chance to visit Istanbul some day. Now, I can!

Is it just Istanbul?

NO! We went to 7 places, namely, Bursa, Kusadasi, Pamukkale, Cappadocia, Ankara, Safranbolu, and finally… Istanbul. It was quite an adventure!

What can I expect?

Other than the usual this-was-what-I-did-here posts, I’ve thought of a few creative ways to do my Isketambola travelogues differently. Expect one word posts, music clips, funny stories, historical nuggets and pictures.. lots and lots of pictures.

So do stay tuned!

Taste and Other Tales 1/12

February 2, 2015

Taste And Other Tales
By: Roald Dahl

Back when I was in secondary school (like you know, high school), it was compulsory for each and every student to take up Literature. While most of my friends from other schools said that their schools offered Literature during the last two or three years of their secondary school curriculum mostly as an elective, my school offered a choice of:

1. Core Literature with elective Geography
2. Core Literature with elective History
3. Core Geography with elective Literature

You could not escape Literature no matter how much you hated it. Thankfully for me, I loved Lit not only because I love reading and the classes were fun, I genuinely love the subject.

We did this book in Secondary One. It was our very first year being introduced to Literature and we had to do two books: a poetry and prose. I am hopeless at Poetry, hence I stuck to Prose.

Taste and Other Tales is a collection of eight of the best short stories Roald Dahl penned. They aren’t whimsical stories; they are more like stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. ‘Extraordinary’ things don’t necessarily mean good things.

My favourite piece is The Leg of Lamb or Lamb to the Slaughter written in 1953. It’s a simple story about a pregnant woman, and her police officer husband who told her he was going to leave her, and a leg of lamb. Click here to enjoy it and hopefully you’ll see why I love it so much.

Birth and Fate or Genesis and Catastrophe is a fictionalised account based on a true historical incident, which is the birth of a man whose name shall be known to the entire world even after his death in years to come. It tells a story of a woman Klara who just gave birth to a baby boy but feared that she might lose the baby as her three other children, Gustav, Ida and Otto had died in infancy. The doctor, in the attempts to calm her down, asked her what she’d liked her baby named. She tells him that her son would be called ‘Adolfus’. Do you know who this baby will grow up to be already?

See, textbooks aren’t so bad after all! A light read to start off the year, and the next book for February would be one of my top 3 all-time favourite book:
If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern

Why Isketambola?

Is it just Istanbul?

What can I expect?

Taste And Other Tales By: Roald Dahl

Taste And Other Tales
By: Roald Dahl