North to Bursa

LEAVING Selçuk we drove north.  It was to be a long driving day.  The Turkish government has invested a great deal of money into improving the road system, and it certainly was immensely improved from my vague memories of 1995.  Main roads are usually four lane.  They are not access-controlled however; you will be slowed by the occasional tractor or donkey cart.  You will not be slowed by the Turkish auto driver.  

Driving in Turkey on the first day of Bayran.  The Turkish driver.

Fast, aggressive, with a tendency to drift from his lane to yours or to ride with the tires right on the lane marker line.  Almost always a male driver.  Almost always a smallish car stuffed with people.  A child safely seat is a conceit of us Westerners. The main highway will go into each town with no bypass.

One of the traditions of Bayran is to visit home.  This often meant a visit to the graves of the relatives in ones native village or town.  We saw lots of masses of cars that we suspected might be a traffic accident; it was cars parked alongside the highway next to the cemetery.  Flowers are left at the graves.

Because so much intercity travel is by car or bus, the roads feature attractive and comfortable rest stops with a gas station, a convenience store and often a cafeteria or restaurant.

These are service stations.

Like we used to have.  

squat toilet

Mechanics. Food. Car wash.  Bus wash. Cold drinks.  And usually "western" toilets.  The more traditional squat toilet is still ubiquitous.  In the less-visited "rest stops" the squat toilets are pretty rank.  But for the most part in the larger places they are clean and do not smell too much like the cess pool that is below them.

 Sean  downloaded our route into his phone (when we had WiFi) and we could navigate pretty well with that.We did have a not-lost-but-don't-exactly-know-where -to-go in Izmir.  There was a complicated set of highway changes coming up and the signs were not (in the opinion of the navigator--me) either well placed or providing useful information.  If you knew what towns were along the route, you were OK.  If you only knew that you were heading for Bursa, you were not OK.

Izmir.  So we missed our turn off.  Took the next off ramp and negotiated our way back to the road we needed.  GPS said we were exactly on the road we needed.  We said, no we weren't.  GPS is great for two

from Fodor guide

dimensions but lousy for three.  The elevated road we needed was there all right.  It was thirty feet up in the air;  not a clue as to where an on-ramp might be.  Sean intuited, drove  and we found our road. Izmir (former Smyrna) lies on the edge of the Aegean and Izmir Bay.  It's harbor is not silted in and it is a busy port.  To the west is Çeşme on the Aegean.  To the west of Çeşme is Chios, the Greek Island closest to the Turkish coast.  Kati and I spent a week on Chios in 1998 before taking a ferry and then a bus to visit the Toker family in Bursa/Mudanya.

 
While Fodor suggests that that the 7,000 years of history of Izmir had left behind "some fascinating sights and a vibrant cosmopolitan edge"   I have not had the chance to see that.

Fodor Guide map

Atılgan, Kati and I did spend a night in a commercial travelers hotel in Izmir in 1995.

In 2014 our goal was Bursa.  On to Bursa.  

Yeşil Bursa.                                         

Bursa lies directly south of Istanbul on the Asia part of Anatolia.  Locals proudly refer to Bursa as Yeşil (Green) Bursa for its many parks and forests and for the green-hued Iznik tiles that decorate many of its monuments.  It was the first capital of Ottoman Turkey.  Bursa was the end of the Silk Road.  The Marmara Sea lies to the north and a tall mountain Uludağ lies to the south. It is a ski mountain. Sean and his Turkish family skied here when he was an AFS exchange student in '89-'90.

Bursa House 2014 Sean & Veli

When Sean lived there and when Kati(Kate)  and I visited Turkey in 1995, the Tokers lived in a flat in the city.  They later finished the house they were building in the suburban town of Mudanya.  That was where we met them in 1998, in 2012 and this summer.

We arrived safely after a long, hot and safe ride through the northwestern parts of Anatolia.