The lungs of Istanbul, Belgrad Forest is one of the closest escape points for us Istanbulites.. When autumn comes, Belgrad Forest takes on a different form.. It offers you incredible views with its yellowed leaves.. You can’t believe it creates the feeling of being so close to the city and yet so far.. Just in time for mushrooms, maybe you want to make your way to Belgrad Forest and maybe try something other than the classic barbecue event.
Don’t forget to follow me on my instagram account.. I tell a lot in stories and highlights
Instagram: Nerdesinbahar
I hit the road again with the call of a friend “Spring, let’s go to the Belgrad Forest to collect mushrooms”. Another friend is accompanying us. Being on weekdays is also a source of joy.. If you can go go on a weekday. It’s great to stand out from the mad crowd. Although there was no one but us in the huge Belgrade Forest. So don’t go alone. Don’t forget to bring a pocketknife, lighter, whistle, torch and fly repellent.. A powerbank must be in your bag. Of course, a basket or box to put your collected mushrooms, a rope to tie this basket.. Mushrooms are ruined when you put them in the bag. You should definitely take water and food with you.. Of course, it is also possible to shop at Bahçeköy, where we landed.
How did we get to Belgrad Forest?
We are meeting at the exit of the Hacıosman metro stop at an early hour.. From there we will take a bus to the Belgrade Forest. Buses depart frequently from Bahçeköy station.. Since it is a weekday, we do not have trouble finding a place to sit.. We get off at Bahçeköy stop and do our small shopping.. We already brought food with us. We want the box in which we will put the mushrooms from a market and we start walking.. We started walking behind the shops across the walls.
Serdar, who invited me, is guiding us.. If you are not going with someone who knows the place, either follow the trekking groups or do not dive into the depths of the forest as you will get lost too much.. Although, later on, when I opened the navigation and selected the walking option, it drew me a path.. After all, we are wandering in the Belgrade Forest’, which is affiliated to Bağcılar Municipality.
The Last Mushroom Hunters of Belgrad Forest
My friend Selda and I, who joined us later, are in the back, Serdar is in the front, the last mushroom hunters are on our way to the depths of the forest in a warm Istanbul autumn. This sentence was very cool, but that’s exactly what happened.. Various mushrooms started from the entrance of Belgrade Forest, but of course we don’t know which ones to eat.. Our teacher Serdar. He sings “this is edible, this is inedible“. He even went to his course once.. I didn’t know there were so many types of mushrooms.. There is, of course, in the world, but let’s say I didn’t know that there are so many varieties in Belgrade Forest.
For example, we saw something like red plastic.. It’s a mushroom. If I thought for forty years, I wouldn’t have realized it was a mushroom.. It’s so fun to photograph outside of Yemen.. As if if we were good kids we could find the village of the Smurfs and meet Papa Smurf.. That’s why I don’t bend over and look at the mushrooms. While we are walking deep in the forest, we come across huge mushrooms.. Umbrella mushroom. We can tell whether mushrooms can be eaten or not by the ring on the stem.. This umbrella mushroom was the biggest and most delicious.. We are afraid to show the mushrooms we collected to Serdar. He doesn’t like the mushrooms that we collect carefully and throws them away.. According to him, there are many, but in our opinion, what we collect should not be thrown away.. We are starting to hide it from him towards the end.
I find a “village dented” mushroom that I learned on my previous Belgrad Forest hike.. It got this name because even a tiny bit of it could kill a village.. When I make jokes with him, Serdar can’t even stand to look at him.. It was just a joke. Of course I didn’t eat.
Now we’re in search of Chestnuts… They couldn’t get enough
While we were wandering in the Belgrad Forest, we came across a shepherd. This is happening in Istanbul. When he shows us the chestnuts he collected, the second destination is chestnuts.. It is a delicious feeling to reach bright chestnuts from inside their thorny outer shell.. Here we need fly spray a lot, but we don’t have it with us.. Giant mosquitoes do not forgive us.
If you do not deviate from the classical routes in Belgrad Forest, you will come across many fairy tale banks.. When we’re hungry, we collapse into one of these and have a great picnic with what we brought.. Stream flows on one side. On the other hand, we are in an autumn photo with yellowed leaves. We will not be able to calculate the time well, so we are left at dusk.. While walking, we may have thought “civilization around the corner” and slept a little, but that corner was not the corner we know.. At that moment, navigation shows me that we are not far from civilization, and we can easily get out.. Our walk, which we started from Bahçeköy, ends in Kemerburgaz.. There we sit in the cafe in the square, drink tea and eat the freshly baked pastries of the famous brother Ali.
We share the mushrooms we collected.. I wonder if these are really edible, while they haven’t been able to afford to throw any of them away until now? I might be worried. I feel relieved when Serdar says edible. He will have understood my concern, he says, “Even if I tell you, do not eat without research and conviction” and shows me the illustrated descriptions of the mushrooms we have collected on the Internet.. I couldn’t find the link we looked at that day, but you can also check it out here. At the end of the day with lots of conversation, we are all happy when we make our way home by bus at the stop.
The flavor of the umbrella mushrooms that I brought home and ate…
Don’t forget to follow me on my social media accounts. For more photo and pill information;
Instagram:
If you write your experiences or questions in the comments, we can add that information to the article so that other people get more information.
