Central Hotel Bursa

... noticed<br>that the plots of land went high up the side of the foothills. Crete<br>had sheep and goats; here, we saw cattle.<br><br>Konya is a huge, metropolitan, modern city in the middle of this dry area. <br>We passed a small dam on the way to the city, but its reservoir<br>didn't seem adequate for a city of 800,000 and all the farmland! <br>Konya is the home of the famous Whirling Dirvishes, so retains much<br>tradition and culture. Its Mevlana Museum is the ...

... hadn't missed anything. There was your standard street market taking place. Lots of fabric wares it seemed to me, along with other domestic necessities and desireables. We had time for a lunch. And after lunch we were out to the town square just in time for a preview of things to come, merely a couple of folk dances by the local groups. One was by youngsters of about 10 to 12. 95% of them seemed none too happy about what they were doing. (There was one cutie, though, that I sort of ...

... my host I walked up to Istanbul's famous Istiklal Caddesii off of which is a good bookstore with abundant books in English, Pandora (http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/ Istanbul/Shopping/bookshops/pandora.htm l). I bought one to start my reading, and set a few aside for later as I didn't want to carry them. I then walked down to the waters of the Golden Horn to a ferry landing. The Turkish Travel Pixies were not with me, as I walked through the door as the ferry was pulling ...

... quoted words, but in the larger descriptions of the social and civil structuring. So, I'm wondering, how much of the latter arising Ottoman society is directly due to the neighboring archetype of the Byzantine? Then I soon read, on the first page of the book on Byzantine warfare: "Byzantium survived so long partly because internally it was well-organized, with an efficient fiscal and military system; and partly because these advantages, rooted in its late Roman past ...

... back to Turkey, and spending some time in the Kaçkar Mountains of the northeast. A couple of things about Tblisi. It was just emerging from the domination of the Russians, an emerging capitalist society. There were stores like Prada and the like on the main street. It looked to me to be a city ripe for gentrification, a notion that it could be a great place for young artists to begin the process by moving in, living cheaply and getting things ...

... In Turkish these i's are undotted, meaining they have an "uh" sound. Also, the c without the tail is pronounced as a j. So the name is something like Joom-ah-luck-uh-zuhk. There we stopped into an a fresco "restaurant" that serves an, I guess, Turkish "country breakfast."<br><br> We went on to walk around the village, the village in a relative tranquil state this day not being a weekend with droves of tourists. We did, however, have a brief chat with a young couple ...

... ie., work, p**haps) in ord** to strictly obs**ve sabbath proscriptions. In my mind surely a sign of increasing radical irrationality. What hope for peace in such trends? <br><br>23 January 2007 -- The New York Times <br><br> Article noting the expansion of the Antarctic Ozone Hole due to the increase in use of harmful air conditioning refrig**ants by people in India and China....thanks in part to an explosion of demand for air-condition**s in hot places like India and south**n ...

... protection. They all wear dark glasses, but that seems to be because of brightness, not eye protection. The stone is not marble, but a fairly pure whitish calcareous<br> material. And, they all smoke cigarettes. It's not for me to lecture. . . .<br><br>They worked fairly consistently, but it was casual in spirit. Collegial. Fortunately the day was windy and blew the dust quickly away, and was a welcome cooling influence. I wanted to join in with the assistants (except for not ...

... family and friends--arrived. A son-in-law spoke English, having spent two years getting his Masters in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic University in Albany, New York. (Speaking of which--I can't help the diversion--I went to the university site to check on the spelling, [http://www.rpi.edu/] and found this lead article:<br><br>On the Boil: New Nano Technique Significantly Boosts Boiling Efficiency <br><br>Whoever penned the ...

... to the Tschibo Coffee Company. There they used the plastic to make little dishes in which they sold the coffee. And, the driver and I would have a cup of coffee, of course. I thought I had seen--and participated in--an interesting cycle of international capitalism.<br><br>When I left the mall, due to the heat I walked along a grassy area that was being watered. Past a sprinkler a tattoo of large cool water drops thudded into my back. I wondered what it was like to be so machine ...