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CULTURE
ABD EL KADER ABD
Odunpazarı is a small district in Eskisehir and it is considered to be one of the richest cultural regions of central Anatolia, which made it a destination for a lot of tourists and became the city's watermark for tourism.
Gaining international interest
Known for It is colourful Ottoman houses, the different historical places and unique Turkish cafes in addition to the distinguished handcraft art works like woodwork, glassing and hand sewing works which even got its own bazaar on weekends, Odunpazari was the first settlement in Eskisehir and it was included in the UNESCO's world heritage list back in 2012. With the increasing number of tourists in Eskisehir, the district can be really crowded especially on weekends, even though most of the tourists are domestic but in recent years, we started to see even international visitors to the region.
“We get visitors from a lot of countries, most of them from middle eastern countries like Bahrain and Palestine and Tunisia but still even from European countries like Netherlands and Germany and they all have Odunpazarı on their interest list” Tasigo hotel receptionist told us.
“I have visited Turkey for 3 times, my last visit was combined of visiting three different cities Istanbul, Eskisehir and Konya and I have to say that Eskisehir was different as it was the city with the least international tourists so it was a good chance to know the real Turkish culture and to spend 2 days in such a quiet place unlike both Konya and for sure Istanbul, Odunpazarı and Sazova park were the two most featuring spots I have visited and it was impressive to find a resort as big as Tasigo in a small city like Eskisehir.” Palestinian tourist told us.
Coffee made on sand
We can not mention Odunpazarı without passing by one of the most distinguished features of it, It's cafes and in Odunpazari one of the most different things that you may find in its cafes is the coffee on sand. This way of serving is not something that can be found in general touristic places in Turkey, but in Eskisehir the story is different and it is not fancy places as you will find mostly locals coming to sit down for a small talk and drinking a cup of this outstanding coffee.
We talked to Mr Bariş Ekici the owner of Kumda Kahve, which was among the very first to make coffee on sand near Odunpazarı.
“We’ve known coffee on sand since our childhood, we used to do it in our village, they used to heat the sand on iron plates using fire and then serve it in the villages kıraathanes – a synonym for cafes in our modern day; we learned how to do that from our grandfathers so it is a really traditional Ottoman way of making and serving coffee.” Mr Ekici said.
Now it is not hard to do it as it was in the past with all these machines out in use but still the taste of coffee on sand is really unique and different.
“The difference between coffee on sand and normal coffee is that when you do it on sand, the whole coffee kettle from all its sides will be heated up in the same time unlike the normal way, where you only heat the bottom of the kettle and it erupts suddenly and this gives it a different taste.” Mr. Ekici added.
The preparation way is too old but also the serving way is taken from the days of the Ottoman Empire as the coffee is being served in a traditional way with a small Turkish delight as nothing can match the coffee more perfectly than Turkish delight.
The story of Odunpazarı doesn’t end with the coffee on sand. It is only one of many distinguished things to do, walking through the narrow colourful eye-catching streets and buying a souvenir or some other handcrafts which can be possibly made of white stones called Luli that extracted exclusively from Eskisehir and even visiting the “Mevlevehanesi” where you can experience the sophism culture. All these are few out of so many to do, maybe it is the time to go on and discover some spots by yourself and give Odunpazarı a try.
