Eskisehir, Turkey

I want to tell you about Eskisehir, where I’m studying at Anadolu University. It’s placed on east-central area of Turkey and 350 km from Istanbul. You can get here by car (~3 hours)and by bus(~4. 5 hours), actually. The railway between Istanbul and Eskisehir is in repair.

Eskisehir is well known for its universities: Anadolu and Osmangazi.

I arrived here thank to collaboration between University of Art and Design from Cluj Napoca (Universitatea de Artă şi Design) and Anadolu University.

At first sight Anadolu is on vast surface. Sometimes I’m feeling like a student in America. It has a lot o facilities like: a big library which offers books about all study fields (art, philosophy, business, medicine, psychology and others), a canteen where you can eat very cheap for 1 TL daily (~0. 50 euro! ), football fields, swimming pool, places where you can drink coffee or tea, a small museum of art which is placed in area’s Faculty of Fine Arts (or Guzel Sanatlar Fakultesi) and small parks. But I don’t know well the campus still.

Eskisehir has 650, 000 inhabitants and it’s larger than my town, Cluj Napoca which has ~400, 000 inhabitants. When I arrived here I was surprised to observe that Eskisehir is an active and crowded city thanks to the students who study here (shops opened until 22 pm, a lot of bars, concerts, events). I didn’t expect it!

I have been in Turkey in 2008 but I stayed here less than one week. I visited Sinop and Istanbul. I was fascinated so I wanted to come back next year, but I couldn’t. But destiny offered me the chance to live and study here. Before coming here, I didn’t know what to expect from Turkey. I’m feeling here like in Europe. People are modern, talkative and they love life!

I want to know better Turkey, to see it with my eyes not eyes of tourists who come here for all inclusive. I want to know real Turkey.

About Eskisehir… it offer a lot of opportunities to spend your time: parks (Sazova, Kent and other), hamami, museums (of glass, of archeology), old houses to visit… I want to thanks my Turkish friends for their advice about visiting this country.