City vs. Town
By Melody Heath
After only a few hours of
enduring
the city of Istanbul in Turkey,
I headed
for the quiet countryside only a bus ride away. As
the sun set my travel companions and I passed through steep mountains
covered
in trees and
blanketed with snow. After tolerating
the intense heat of Vietnam
and India,
the frigid, crisp air shocks my senses.
My
two friends and I hopped from one town to the next along the western
coast of
the Black Sea in northern Turkey.
Starting off in Sinop, we made our way to
Inebolu, and finished in Safronbolu before heading back to Istanbul all by
bus. These three towns were as different
from Istanbul
as they could
possibly be.
Not
only were they smaller, but the atmosphere of the towns was completely
different. The mountains and valleys
were not full of construction or covered with empty apartment complexes
waiting
to be filled. Proud shop keepers
displayed their products outside their stores, but didn’t pressure us
to buy
anything. Children and teenagers alike
milled around during their lunch break and practiced their English by
talking
to us. In short, everything was quieter
and somehow similar to what I would find in my hometown of Roanoke, Virginia.
In Money Makes us Relatives, Jenny B. White
discusses
how the
population and urban growth in Istanbul
threatens to ruin the city’s unique look. In
chapter two particularly—entitled “Bridge Between
Europe and Asia”—she mentions a fear
that the new construction will
“overwhelm the historic character of the city, its natural environment,
and its
infrastructure” (23).
The
only way I could understand what White is talking about in her book was
to
leave the city and see the more historic or traditional Turkey. Safronbolu is home to more than twenty
Mosques. Located in a valley, it was easy
to see each Mosque when we climbed on top of a hill that overlooks the
town. Bread shops and tea parlors
dominate the town life, which includes only one traditional Turkish
bath.
I
hope that the people who live in the countryside, which is usually full
of
tourists during the summer months, can find a way to preserve their
communities. I do not want each of these
unique and historic towns to be either replaced by modernist
metropolitanism or
abandoned
for another.
|