Mini-break in Eskişehir

 Eskişehir reborn

 I’ve  just returned from a wonderful overnight trip to this city of about 650,000, which lies just  over halfway between Istanbul and Ankara in Central Anatolia, and is home to several universities, including  Anadolu Üniversitesi, the largest in Turkey.  It was a revelation. Up till now, I only knew Eskişehir as a place to pass through on the way to somewhere else but recently it has been in the news thanks to the energy and vision of one enterprising man,  Professor Yılmaz Büyükerşen, politican, educator, and the current Mayor. With tremendous initiative, he has succeeded in transforming Eskişehir from a dusty, conservative Anatolian town to one that is now more than ready to receive visitors. His many achievements include the reconstruction of one hundred and fifty Ottoman houses in the old part which have been meticulously restored with some of them housing museums and art galleries.   Another  hundred are scheduled to be done up.

stunning pieces at the Cam Muzesi/ Glass Museum



and here is one of the gondolas



The River Porsuk which dissects the city, formerly dirty and neglected, has been transformed with riverbanks, bridges, and sidewalks; smaller branches are now canals.

It even boasts gondola rides now!  Two major parks have been built , both with artificial lakes, and one even has beaches for the populace of Eskisehir to enjoy in the summer months.





 And who knew that this city is internationally known as the source of meerschaum/lületaşı?   We visited a museum with a fascinating display of pipes all elaborately carved and quite beautiful.

We were a group of eight organized by my friend Ayşe: four of us were old friends dating back to when we were all English teachers  twenty four years ago  at  Semiha Şakir Lisesi,  a local high school here in Istanbul on the Asian side, and the others represented similar long-standing friendships. The aim of our trip was two-fold:  to visit the highly-accclaimed Patchwork Exhibition that her cousin was participating in, and then to give us a taste of the city where she was born. A real mini-break!

                                                                                                               

                               The culinary delights of this beguiling city included:


a very tasty Chinese dinner at Chinatown

For dinner that evening Ayşe had made a reservation at this stylish restaurant. I was surprised to find a restaurant of that calibre in a little place like Eskişehir with such good food, excellent service, and much cheaper than a comparable place in Istanbul.

çiğ börek (pron: chi beurek) originally a Crimean Tatar speciality: this is a portion for one!

This dish was introduced to Eskişehir in the late 19th Century when a group of Tatars were settled here. Each börek is filled with raw mince and then fried. The pastry is very light and surprisingly it was easy to polish off all five! Strictly speaking, forks are not used, just fingers and paper napkins! The speed with which these appeared from the kitchens was amazing: we were a party of 20 by that time, and there were tons of other people already and the service was impeccable. We sat outside as the temperature was just right with the sun beating gently on our backs.

su muhallebisi, another local speciality

Muhallebi is a kind of milk pudding and su means water. It contains very little sugar we were assured - but it's piled on top instead! The water refers to the fragrant pink rose water that crowns each portion. Delicious! The muhallebici was our last stop before driving back to the station to catch our train to Istanbul at 16.45.

Our delightful guide Taylan

I can thoroughly recommend a visit to Eskişehir - a weekend, perhaps?