(catch-up Post)
Sunday, 14 October (Part I)
After a good night’s rest at the guest lodgings on the campus of Anadolu University, mom and I had breakfast in the dining room and checked out from our rooms. It was a beautiful day to enjoy the campus, so we went for another stroll around the grounds as we waited for Mui and Işıl to come by to take us sightseeing around the city. First stop: Odunpazarı.
Odunpazarı Evlerİ (the Houses of Odunpazarı) and
the statue of Mal Hatun, the wife of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire.
[scanned from postcard]
Translated as the firewood market, Odunpazarı is a metropolitan district of Eskişehir. History records it as the site of the oldest settlement in the area, which gave rise to today’s modern city. Recent restoration of the 19th century Ottoman style houses has turned it into a hotspot for visitors. Some of the houses have been converted into museums, boutique hotels, and restaurants; others remain as private residences.
This end of the street is lined with houses not yet renovated.
The colorful exterior paint job is a hallmark of the restored houses of Odunpazari.
I find that I don’t take nearly as many photos when I’m not wandering around by myself, or with just Mui as my companion. So, if you’d like to see more of the houses, click here.
Işıl had a couple of museums in mind for us to visit. It turns out, however, that only one of them was open today — the Çağdaş Cam Sanatları Müzesi (Museum of Modern Glass Art). The museum, housed within a complex of renovated buildings, opened to the public in 2007. Since then, the glass works of Turkish artisans, as well as invited foreign artists, have been exhibited here. Many of the really creative pieces were difficult to photograph, but I managed to click the shutter to capture some of the art on display. This was perhaps my favorite stop of the day.
 |  |
Left: The museum is housed in a collection of renovated buildings that open onto a courtyard.
right: One of my favorite pieces is this one by S. Gülgün Ürgüplü; it features a maiden
with İstanbul’s Leander’s Tower (KIz kulesİ; or maiden’s tower) incorporated into the design.
Salamander - Abbas Pekıṣık.
 |  |
Glass art by Ekrem Özen (left) and Mehmet Koç.
Although this piece by Beyza Tükel is unnamed, it’s easy to figure out what it is.
I thought the artist was quite creative in filling the hopper with silica
and showing glass coming out the grinder heads.
Left and Center: Glass caftan by Yasemİn Aslan Bakİrİ
Right: Madonna and Child by guest artist, George Papadopoulos.
By this time, we were quite thirsty, and our feet were telling us that it was time to take a break. Finding ourselves near Atlıhan Çarşısı (literally, Inn with the Horses), which was constructed as an inn in the 1850s, and renovated and converted to a handicraft market in 2006, we decided that a café in the courtyard behind it would serve just fine for a brief rest.
Resting our feet and quenching our thirst at Yağcızade Konağı (literally translated as
mansion of the son of the oil man), which gets its name from the blue house in the courtyard.
a sİmİt from the bakery, split four ways, to tide us over until lunch.
Our last stop before leaving Odunpazarı was a market set up for women to sell regional handcrafts, homemade foods, knitted and crocheted clothing, and decorative items. With plans to live full-time in our motorhome after retirement later this year, I wasn’t interested in shopping. However, it was interesting to see how these women had formed cooperatives in order to use their skills to make a little extra pocket money. And in some cases, earn a living.
Mom and Işıl both bought bags of homemade tarhana — which their respective families will benefit from when they use it to make soup. And Aylin benefited from this stop with a gift mom picked up for her — a pair of fingerless gloves.
Homemade goods ranging from food, to decorative items, to clothing.
Yummy gözleme (flatbread of sorts) made to order … but we resist since we have a date for lunch.
On that note, we left Odunpazarı behind to meet Mui’s brother-in-law and mother for lunch in a different part of the city. But I’ll keep that for the next post.
