I am a visiting professor at Bogazici Universitesi (Bosphorus University or 海峡大学) for one semester and would like to take this opportunity to explore Turkey and the neighboring countries. For work, I will give a series of seminars on “Modern Biomedical Engineering and Quality of Life” at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and a regular course on “China and the Silk Road” for the Department of History. Bogazici is one of the very top universities in Turkey, drawing only the top students from the annual national entrance examination. I expect the students to be smart and hardworking but not probably quite as hardworking as those I taught at Tsinghua and Beida.
We stay in an apartment on campus, which perches on the European side of the Bosphorus Strait and requires climbing to get from one building to another. Our apartment, one of six in a three-story white wooden house, overlooks the strait and is just two steps from the Fortress of Europe, now a national museum, built by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1452, one year before he entered Constantinople and finished off the 1500-year old Roman Empire, more commonly known as Byzantine Empire in its last 1000 years.
The architect of the house managed to orient it in such a way that we can see the Asian part of Istanbul from both our front window and back window. We have re-arranged the furniture in the house so that I now can sit at my desk and see the bridge nearby that links the Asian part of Istanbul to the larger and more important European part.
My office in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, which has recently moved to the University’s Asian campus, also has a good view. I can see the Fortress of Europe, even one corner of “our” white wooden house. But for the sake of convenience, I will probably do most of my work in the History Department, or just in the apartment when printing or copying is not needed.
Min-min hopes to see more places in Istanbul than she was able to during our first visit here in 2004, but she plans to return to Hong Kong before the end of October. That means she needs to “work hard” to enjoy herself! We are squeezing in a few weekends for places away from Istanbul. Tomorrow we are going to Edirne, capital of the Ottomans after they crossed over to the European side in mid-14 century but before they moved to Constantinople (today’s Istanbul). We will go by bus. My assistant, a doctoral student in History, has helped us find the bus schedule and reserved seats for us. She has also written down a few sentences in Turkish on a piece of paper, just in case we will need some of them. So there is an element of adventure in the first long-distance bus ride in Turkey for both of us.
I will tell you how the trip to Edirne turns out in my next communication. Meanwhile, be good, take care and say that you enjoy reading my notes.
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