Internet is Back!! (For now)

The internet situation here in the Misafirhane has been sketchy at best. It's up and down. This is not my first attempt at blogging this week. I have lost many a blog post to the dreaded "Safari Cannot Display Webpage" message. I had intended to do a ton of blogging tonight (I have a lot of updates in the next few days), but it took a while to get the internet up and running, so one for tonight will have to suffice.

I figure the most interesting post would be one about the city of Eskişehir since I live here and am in the city center each day. Plus, it's an attractive city.

So, let's begin with a little etymology. "Eski" is Turkish for "old." "Şehir" is Turkish for "city." Ironically, it's a college town with a substantial population under the age of 30. It's positioned about halfway between İstanbul and Ankara (if you don't know where they are, I suggest consulting a map. I don't know that I can help you any more than that). The population is roughly 1 million people. I think, of everything, that has been the biggest culture shock for me. I'm not remotely used to city life, but I've rapidly acclimated. I sorta like it. It's great just to have everything right there when you need it. The public transportation system in Eskişehir is excellent. You can take the tram (street level rail-line), minibus, or otobus. We typically take the Dolmuş (minibus) into town, and an Otobus (number 31) back home. And yes, as you probably could have guessed, they're not terribly punctual. Not bad though. Today, in fact, was the worst. 31 was almost 20 minutes late.

Okay, enough of my ramblings. We all know you skipped to the pictures anyway.

Speaking of public transport, this is the tram line. I apologize for the poor camera work. If you'll notice, I was standing on the tracks of the opposing line and it was coming at me, so I snapped this as I was getting out of the way.

This is the opposite direction. You can see the wires crisscrossing above. The trams sort of come out of no where. This was taken maybe a minute before the previous one and suddenly I was dodging a tram!

There are stray dogs and cats everywhere. They just sort of roam the streets and no one bothers them. This particular dog I see quite frequently. I generally see the same dogs every time I'm in town. Funny enough, he stopped to take this picture with me.

This very large, very beautiful Mosque is in downtown Eskişehir. I've not been able to go inside yet. I'm going to try and visit at some point.

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I laughed so hard that I thought I would share. They have Converse store downtown in this was the image in the front window. No, your eyes aren't going bad. Those are seriously Converse flipflops.

The streets are line with tons of shops. Typically, above are apartments. This particular shot is of Erdoğan's friend's apartment. 

This a better shot of the market district. You can see the multitude of shops below and the apartments above... and the loads of people. It's always crowded here, even at night. This is a good time to mention that the entire city is lit up at night. There are all sorts of lights strung up on trees, in parks, on poles, just around the city. I can't seem to get a good shot of it. I'll keep trying.

These are the Dolmuşlar. We take one of these into town. This particular stop is one of the major stops in the city. They refer to it as Stadyum (in reference to the large soccer stadium of to the left (not depicted)).

The beautiful Porsuk Nehir, runs through the center of the city. Porsuk is the Turkish word for Badger. Personally, I'll just stick with Porsuk. Sounds better. You can see in the background the typical Eskişehir apartment buildings.

More Porsuk Shots

Speaking of the river, another mode of travel is ferry's. This is a more touristic approach, but it gets you where you want to go on top of affording awesome views of the city. I think we're going to take a boat around sometime. 

Day trip to Venice? Nah. This is just the better, even less efficient way to see the city. 

The day I took these [last Sunday night (19.06.2011)] was the day before a big football game. Football is a huge deal for people of Eskişehir. That night, the team paraded around town chanting with people swarming around them taking pictures. They take "local celebrities" to a whole new level. In any case, the team stopped here for a short while and enjoyed a dinner party on this raft on the river. A very elaborate dinner party at that. There was a DJ playing Euro Dance music, caterer, waiters, really delicious looking food (but, hey, all the food here is good).

On that note, I'll introduce you to Kumbru (also known as an Izmir Sandviç) This unbelievably good little sandwich is one of my favorites. It's a combination of 3 different salamis, cheese, and pickles. Delicious.

This is some sort of administrative building in the city. It's not only old, beautiful architecture, it sits behind an elaborate fountain that pours into the river.

That evening, we went a saw a movie. It was a ridiculously stupid French film (subtitled in Turkish... talk about challenging my language skills) about these vampire zombies. Reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes, if any of you have seen that equally stupid movie. Yes, to answer your question, that IS my hand. I had the theatre rolling with my dog impression during the interlude (the ear was better before... didn't get the picture at the right time). In my defense, although I was acting like a child, the 30 year old next to me started it! But really, we were the only ones there and so we enjoyed the 15 minute break with a few shadow puppets. It was quite entertaining. All in all, exponentially better than the whole movie.

I think that's about all for now! I'll be blogging a bunch more this week. Updates include some more work photos (field work, finally!), microscope shots, trip to the park, and an event at the Stadium. I'll continue to add photos of the city as I get them as well. There's a lot to take pictures of here in Eskişehir. 

Almost 1,000 views!! Keep 'em coming, guys! As long as you're reading, I'll keep posting. I'm glad to know you all are interested. 

Çok teşekkür ederim!

İyi geceler—

Andrew