Hello from Turkey!

This week my work travels have taken me to Bursa, Turkey. Therefore, everything on my screen right now (except for this text) is displayed in Turkish. Hmm, good thing I know blogger pretty well. The best thing is that the hotel in which we are staying has free wireless internet! That's not true in very many hotels.

The hotel is a very old building which has been renovated. The room was absolutely gorgeous. I took a picture, which I will upload when I get back to Germany. It's located on the edge of the botanical garden, so each morning we (my colleague and I) have been getting up extra early to go walking in the garden. It's cold here, but it's been sunny in the mornings, so it's a nice way to wake up.

Unfortunately, as is typical with work travel, I have not seen very much of Bursa. I have seen, from a distance, the mountains. But there is a lot of smog here, so the view of them is not very good. I have seen a couple of restaurants. The first night, I ate octopus (it was already cut up on a plate and didn't look like octupus at all). It tasted good. I let my Turkish colleague order for me, because he knows the food here better and could make a recommendation. So, the main course was fish and my fish was delivered in full body style, meaning that it still had it's head. I am proud to say that I ate it anyway (not the head of course, but a few years it ago, it would have been unthinkable for me to even touch a fish with it's head still on).

Yesterday, we ate a lot of various dishes, a lot of kebap. The meal was delicious! This afternoon, we will head back to Istanbul, about a four hour drive. Then tomorrow morning we plan to do some sight-seeing before flying back to Germany.

In Germany, it's nice and warm. In the 70s in April! We've already been to a beer garden.....

I have pictures of the new apartment, which I will also upload when I'm back. And in other news, I got a pretty major hair cut. My hair was below my collarbone and is now just below my jaw line. It's a little bit too short, but I remembered why I like it better short - less drying time in the morning!!

I just saw our driver pull up......more when I'm back in Germany......hopefully with pictures from Istanbul!!