Bergama Trip and Edremit Trip

Bergama and Edremit Trip
Waiting for the sun…
22-27 March 2008

After without any trip in February, we are now on the way to Edremit, a town of Balıkesir city. It’s only I and Mr. Faruk this time. We had a photograph exhibition “Anadolu’da Yolculuk (Journey in Anatolia)” in Denizli, and then we hit the road for Edremit Körfezi (Gulf). The weather is a problem cuz it’s closed and grey, keeps raining and even hailing sometimes. In gulf, we are supposed to have nice and sunny seaside photo shoots. We’ll see what will happen.

1st day
Before we go to Edremit, we decided to visit Bergama (Pergamon) early in the morning. Bergama is a very nice and small city. We were looking for some place to have breakfast but because it’s Sunday, most of the places were closed. Then we saw a little place Güven Gıda which sells cheese but there is a sign “Village breakfast”, that was the thing we were looking for! :) An old man named Feridun is running the place and two young ladies are helping him. The breakfast consists of great cheese, olive, butter, honey and milk. I was full but I could stop eating. If you ever go to Bergama, you may wanna have your breakfast there. It is on the main street.

After the breakfast we walked in the Bergama streets; colorful old houses and met women chatting in front of their houses. They offered us a Turkish coffee, it was tasty. We visited the Bergama Museum then got in the car and hit first Akropol then Asklepion. Both places are very important and fascinating. It was in March so the weather was turning to spring. Flowers were everywhere in the reminders of Akropol in different colors. Daisies and all kinds of flowers had bloomed. Only a few tourists were visiting Pergamon, so it was nice to see around without a crowd. Especially the theatre was incredible. It was built on the sloop of a hill, and its capacity was 10000 people back then. The Zeus Altar had nothing left except for some rocks that you can’t even tell what it is. For the ones who don’t know the story about it, here is: Numerous uprisings against the Turks as well as the war between Turkey and Russia had worked in favor of the young German Empire by increasing its influence with the Ottoman Empire. Permission to excavate at Pergamon was obtained easily. The division of finds originally agreed upon between Turkey and Berlin was renegotiated with Bismarck’s support in 1878-1879. The new agreement stated that in exchange for 20,000 Marks, the Turkish government would permit all finds relating to the Pergamon Altar to go to Berlin.

We walked around, even though it’s only the rest of a great city, it still looked beautiful. I took some photos, hope I gives you the idea a little.

The next stop is Asklepion. It is connected to Pergamon but it is like a city itself. The Asklepion is a famous ancient medical center built in honor of Asklepios, the god of healing. It was also the world's first psychiatric hospital. They had made medicines from herbals, had patients take mud bath and had them interested in sports and music as a treatment.

I walked down the Sacred Way which takes you to the Asklepion. They had patients walked down here and reach Asklepion; this is the first step of healing. Columns and the theatre must be seen. We took great photos there.

We are staying in Bergama Teacher House, it seemed nice first but they had a party upstairs and it took all night. I could hardly sleep. That’s bad, because on trips, we try to go to bed early so we can have energy to walk around all day.

2nd day
We are in Kaz Dağı (Mountain Ida) today. Ida was where Paris passed judgment on the rival goddesses. The gods are said to have witnessed the Trojan War. Homeros called this region as "the mother of wild animals with abundant springs" at Ilyada. Ida Mountain is famous with its mythology, legends and abundance of oxygen, flora and fauna. We had trekking all day in the National Park. An engineer from The Kaz Dagi National Park had joined us to guide and give information for the story. We drove to the top hill of the mountain; we constantly stopped whenever we saw a waterfall, fountain, endemic flora or anything that interested us. The weather was getting colder while going up. The top hill was foggy. The opening page photo came from this foggy hill. We had bought some olive, bread and cheese before we hit the mountain, so we stopped by a fountain (there is a lot of them) and had a lunch on the way. It’s very nice to have lunch with domestic food in the nature, I believe it fells tastier. There is a lot of resources about Ida Mountain, I am not gonna repeat what you can already find. But what I can tell you is that, if you are looking for a runaway from your modern life and want to have oxygen and to be with nature and the vacation doesn’t always mean a hotel by the sea for you; then you should have a trip to Ida Mountain. There is a lot to see around the mountain, and feel. We are staying in Gur Hotel, very nice and clean place by the sea in Altinoluk. Finally we get to take a good sleep.

PS: The Ida Mountain story is issued for the May issue. http://www.yolculuk.com.tr/

3rd day
The weather is still terrible. I hate to see grey wherever I look. I feel so down because I wanted to have nice stories of seaside places but it seems like it will be very hard. Maybe we should cut the trip and go back, or try our luck.

We have to finish the trip by Friday so we have to hurry up. We got up early to see some places in Edremit and we will go to Burhaniye next day. We left the hotel very early in the morning and got to Idakoy Country House. It’s one of the boutique hotels in Ida Mountain. It is in a big garden with olive trees, very lovely house. They got 6 bedrooms and mostly full during the summer. When we got there, there were tourists from Germany. They weren’t worried about the rain as much; they said they are here to relax. We had an interview with the owners and had some photo shoots.

Our next stop is Altinoluk; we are gonna meet with the mayor İsmail Aynur and he will give us a guide for Antandros Ancient City. A young guide had joined us. We got to Antandros. They had discovered ancient Roman villas here. The marblings were fascinating. The architecture, the marbling and its history was very exciting. A university is excavating in the summer and it seems like this will be one of important places for the ancient history.

After Antandros, our guide took us to Mihli Cayi (Brook) and Basdegirmen Koprusu (Bridge) on it. We had to walk down from a hill to get to the brook. It was in the forest with a great view. The nature smelled and looked so nice. We run to a lovely surprise. A family was carrying woods with their horses. While we were checking our photos we saw them :) and take some of their photos.

Then, we gave our guide a ride to the city center and hit to one more place in our agenda for today: olive oil museum. Edremit is famous with its olive and olive oil. It is an olive paradise. It is one of the best places in Turkey that produce olive and its oil. You can find olive shops everywhere. One of the companies that produce oil had used its old building as a museum and they carried their old machines and collected some around also. You could see how hard it was to produce olive oil. They had to use animals or big big rocks to squeeze the olive to make oil. A nice detail to see about Edremit.

4th day
We are going to Burhaniye today, before we do that there is one more place to see: The old district of Edremit. It’s called Kapicibasi District. The most interesting thing in this district was the old and colorful doors of the old houses. After a quick taking a look, we are driving to Burhaniye. It’s still in Edremit Gulf but a little further than Akcay, Altinoluk and Kucukkuyu, it is closer to Ayvalik (another olive paradise!). We didn’t expect to see much here but sometimes places prepare you a surprise and you never want to live there. Burhaniye was that kind of places. Maybe because the sun finally showed itself, I don’t know but I definitely loved Burhaniye and its town Oren. We met our contact Tuncay and he already made a route before we arrived. First he took us to Sahinler Mosque. This isn’t one of the mosques you can see anywhere in Turkey. The painting in the mosque was unordinary. I don’t know the year the mosque was built because there is a restoration (it had no sign about the year). It is a very small and lovely mosque in the village but once you go inside, the paintings capture you. They painted the images about the village; the entrance, the graveyard, the fountain etc. very naïve and colorful. We adored the mosque. Then we hit to Rock Altars and saw some endemic floras by it. Another Rock Altar called “rock with hole” gave us a chance to have some great photo shoot. A donkey was our model. Another model was me so I don’t have a picture of it :)

Then we went to my favorite place during the whole trip: Oren. Oren is a secret paradise with Adramytteion Ancient City and its sea is crowned with the Blue Flag. During old ages, this region was called as valley of 1001 winds. They say even in summer Oren is never so hot because it always gets wind from one side. Before we left Burhaniye, someone told us about a man who still does horse cart. It is in Havran very close to Burhaniye. We found his shop so easy before the sun went down. I interviewed with him and Faruk took some photos. Horse carts are one of his favorites subjects that he likes to photograph. Now we have to leave Oren, because there is more to see in Balikesir.

After driving for two hours we get to Balıkesir. It was around 9 but we weren’t going to our hotel. We missed time because of the weather so we had to work faster to finish the trip on Friday. We want to see the Balıkesir Photograph Museum, Faruk called his friend who is one of the managers of the museum. Altug Oymak and Ahmet Esmer were waiting for us. It was a very nice and professional museum, better than what we had expected. I had an interview with Altug and promised to come back next day for the photo shoot.

It was a long day. Very long. I feel so tired. Gotta sleep…

PS: Burhaniye story is issued for the June issue. http://www.yolculuk.com.tr/

5th day
Today is our last day of the trip and there is a lot more to do.

Ahmet Esmer is a very important photographer in Balıkesir. Today he is going to take us to a village which has the last remaining flour mill. Faruk took its photos 15 years ago, back then there were 7 of them but now there is only one left. The funny thing is that when we stopped at the village’s coffee house, people remembered him! Life isn’t full of happenings around here.

They used to use the mill to ground wheat to make flour. People from the villages used to bring their wheat to the mill owners and had a little festival while waiting for their flour. Now there are factories with high technology so no one needs them anymore. The mill owners don’t realize how important this is for their history and culture, so they don’t take care of the mills. I talked to the mill repairman, he told me about how they used to use the mills to produce flour.

We spent the half of the day by the mill. We won’t be able to have a story about Balıkesir but we still can work on famous Balıkesir cologne. Because of Ida Mountain and the flora in this area, people made colognes of the flowers for ages. All kinds of colognes are sold in Balıkesir. Colorful shops sell colognes with olive flower, lavender, lily, lemon etc… After the photo shoot in the museum, finally we made it to the night. The trip is now over. I feel tired but happy, because when we started the weather was terrible. At the and we have bunch of great stories and all of them will be great :)

Photos: Berna Cetin Akgun

Necesarry Phones:

Bergama Museum
+90 232-633-1096

Bergama Teacher House
+90 232-632-0676

Ida Mountain National Park
+90 266-373-1480

Idakoy Country House
+90 266-387-3402

Altinoluk Municipality
+90 266-396-1555

Balıkesir Photograph Museum
+90 266-249-1149