Almira Bursa

... Somehow, I think she<br>enjoyed our discomfort in not knowing what to expect, as she kept<br>looking at us and smiling! <br><br>We were ushered into the domed room and instructed to lie down on the<br>warm marble slab. After several minutes, a woman entered, wearing<br>red briefs and motioned for us to sit up so she could douse us with<br>warm water. One at a time, she shampooed our hair, rubbed our whole<br>bodies down with a loofa mitt, then filled a cloth ...

... first Ottoman sultan, Osman, I was taken by a couple of Bursa residents, Z. and her husband N. I had become acquainted with Z. early in my stay in Bursa when she answered my appeal for help in locating a house to rent. I posted that notice on a travelers' social network to which we both belong. Friday, September 14 was to be the first day of a three-day festival, this year I understand somewhat circumscribed by the festival coinciding with the religious holiday of Ramazan. I had a ...

... sunrise to sunset]. I guess calling them DNs is a bit harsh. But that was my initial thinking. I mean, at least they could jazz up the rhythm a little bit. Well, there isn't rythm, it's a static beat. Alas, Turkish music; a lot of it doesn't have a rhythm that many of us would relate to. I am just back from a two-day, one night visit to Istanbul to buy some books and see a few sights. In my reading I am transitioning from the Ottoman Empire period to the Byzantine Empire period ...

... ploughed through). But one has to wonder, "What was it like on the ground?" These Essential Histories address that curiosity in pretty fair degree. At least the one I have so far just concluded reading, Byzantium at War: AD 600-1453 by John Haldon, did. But, in contextualizing the warring situation, the authors also have to set the cultural and political scene, and to do so succinctly. It was interesting to me, therefore, to see what I presume some associative ...

... have given it such attention were it not for the fact that a little over two years ago I was in Georgia, its capital of Tbilisi, and Gori, the town that has just been bombed by the Russians, apparently. I guess that's about as close to war as I have been. (I went to Gori because that was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. I just went there to go there. Tbilisi I rather liked. I went there because of the name, to be honest. In traveling in ...

. . . . one does not leave behind one's human condition.<br><br> My "girlfriend" came to visit me in Bursa. She left 36 hours ahead of schedule. Is she still my girlfriend? Time will tell. <br><br> I knew there would be good days and bad days. This was one of the bad. Not real bad. Just sad bad. Well, some anger and frustration too. A lot of that was coincidental. A piling on, as they would say in football. We had a nice time while it lasted, though. At least I thought ...

... of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientis by surprise...Tidewat** glaci**s have doubled and tripled in speed all ov** Greenland.<br><br> "The gen**al thinking until v**y recently was that ice sheets don't react v**y quickly to climate," said Martin Truff**, a glaciologist at the Univ**sity of Alaska at Fairbanks. "But that thinking is changing right now, because we're seeing things that people have thought are impossible." <br><br> "Th**e is a dark side to this," he said ...

... of Görükle, a "village" about 10+ kilometers west of Bursa. Well, it used to be a village, perhaps. But now it was rather more like a separate suburban town, having grown up around the Uluda&#287; University complex. Scores of the "standard" modern Turkish concrete apartment complexes now populate the hillsides. Okan had previously done one public sculpture symbolizing the academic nature of the place. The current project, so far consisting of three separate human figures, was ...

... I found the dirt road and set out upon it. It was steeper than I had thought. From the valley it looks to be about a15 percent grade. On it it seems more like a 30 to 35 percent grade. Fortunately, there was not too much traffic, and I had to eat a minimum of dust.<br><br>When I rounded the bend seen from way below, there was a little village there! I walked through the village, heading, as far as the road would go, deeper into the canyon ...

... got to sleep in spite of their conversation echoing up into my bedroom window. But I was able to note that they finally called it quits at 3:00am.<br><br>On Wednesday, now, I sought to address my primary aggravation: the toilet water pipe that was poking me in the ass for being too long, and the looseness of the toilet seat that was loose so as to accommodate same unorthodox, retrofitted pipe.<br><br>I returned to the suburban mall, now knowing which store to go to for the needed supplies ...