In the morning I head down from Cumalıkızık to find a place to repair yesterday’s damage. After only a few kilometers I see a metal workshop through some open gates and ask the guy in there. He points me next door, where I find a full body shop. Bingo! They have a bunch of trucks and buses in there that would be written off most anywhere in the world. The guys are all over the bike and all I have to do is to give some ideas on how to fix the broken license plate assembly. Version one of the bracket doesn’t turn out to my liking and I have them make a better one that goes in from behind and won’t even be noticeable.
I go buy some soft drinks and cigarettes to help the work along. These guys are pretty amazing. We talk about a bus they are repairing that has the whole front half missing. I want to know if it hit a cow 
In Turkish, English and German we talk about engine sizes and horse powers interpresed with some male grunts of appreciation. I found on this trip that you can have this conversation in any language. They also fix my banged up pannier in no time. The job was done in about an hour and cost not a whole lot. What a great start of the day.
I ride back up to Cumalıkızık and without the extra weight I actually enjoy the cobblestone streets. I decide to take the bus for the trip to Bursa. It turns out that, unlike most other places in Turkey, you are supposed to buy a ticket in advance but the driver just waves me on.
Once in Bursa I walk around and take in the sights, starting with the Great Mosque, built in the Seljuk style in 1400ish.
Emir Sultan Camii is a quiet place on a nice hillside.
Walking back down the hill I come across the Vampire Busters van.
I explore the city a bit
as I make my way to the Green Mosque, situated in a nice little park
A friendly teenager in an internet cafe helps me contact some Yamaha dealers in Istanbul to sort out my throttle sensor problems. He has studied German in school but has never been there.
Later I try to get a ticket for the bus back to Cumalıkızık with no luck. Once again the bus driver waves me on. I can’t help think of what would happen if a foreigner would try to do that in Germany. I have in fact witnessed the situation quite a few times. In most German cities the ticketing is automated and so complicated that, even if you can read the language, it’s impossible to figure out unless you use the system daily. Munich for instance has weird Streifenkarte systems. Not only do you need to know how many Streifen for any given journey, you also need to know how to fold them and which way to put them in the machine. So, I always rely on local friends to do that for me. On my last trip to the Munich airport some unfriendly officials checked tickets and gave a Swedish gentlemen a hard time. He didn’t look like a criminal to me and had the money in hand, he just couldn’t figure out how the system works. The official’s English only went as far as “need ticket” and “40 Euro fine”, which he kept barking at him. In that case I had to intervene and eventually they let him off.
