Vural Sokak, Eskişehir: Socialising At Social Pub

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How many times have we sang the praises of Foursquare on this blog? Too many, probably – but we’re going to do it again. Foursquare can only work well if people actively use it and, fortunately for the traveller, Turkey is blessed with a population of people who love to ‘check in’ using Foursquare and various other social media outlets. And how does this benefit us? Well, Eskişehir is a perfect example.

We already knew there were bars and cafes around the Porsuk River and, as our hotel was very close to that area, we stumbled across Traveler’s Cafe and its oversized beers almost immediately…but Eskişehir is packed with thousands of students. We knew there must be a side to the city we were missing. There must be more bars…somewhere.

Vural Sokak & Social Pub, Eskişehir

So it was time to get out the tablet and hit Foursquare so see where people were checking in. Being that Eskişehir is full of students, they’re obviously clued up with their social media and we immediately spotted lots of check ins on a street called Vural Sokak.

We looked at the Foursquare map. Great, not too far of a walk and just over the opposite side of the river. When we got to what we knew to be the right area, Vural Sokak was still proving to be elusive – you can imagine why from the photo above. We were now in a busy, more industrial part of town with many of these side streets that looked much the same as the last.

Oh, how grateful we are for GPS. Eventually, the little flashing blue arrow on our screen directed us to Vural Sokak. We’d walked past it a couple of times – well, you would, wouldn’t you. Not really the type of street we were expecting.

But as we walked along Vural Sokak, quick glances from side to side revealed bar after cafe after bar after bar. And old buildings that were still empty were being renovated and converted into more bars and cafes. Each place was packed – with students, of course – and we were spoiled for choice. We liked Vural Sokak. We’ve made the Eskişehir – Manchester comparison before and this area is no different.

After strolling the length of the street to get a feel for the types of places, we decided to plump for Social – and got the last table. It just made sense to go to a bar with a social media theme when it was social media that had brought us here.

And we returned to Social throughout our stay in Eskişehir. We loved the urban feel to it, the staff were fast and friendly (and yes, young), the music was good with different (young) people DJing in rotation, tables were not numbered but named with all the different social media outlets; Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and many more obscure ones – there were a lot of tables.

We were there at roughly the same time every time we went – late afternoon – and each time we went in, we either got the last table or we had to wait a few minutes…because everyone comes here for breakfast. Long tables, jammed with groups of students all eating breakfast; some washing it down with çay, others with a beer. As we were more thinking about evening meal by this time of day, we skipped out on breakfast and joined in with beer instead.

And when breakfast had been stretched out for as long as possible and it was time to leave, the students did what students do best. We didn’t envy the cashier as groups of young people hovered around the cash register, taking it in turns to point out the food and drink they’d had from a group bill, each person paying and taking their change in turn. Well, look after the kuruş and the liras will look after themselves.

Social Pub, Eskişehir – Useful Info

• Social Pub is in Hoşnudiye Mahallesi on Vural Sokak
• If you are looking for it and need to ask, Vural Sokak is also referred to locally as Barlar Sokağı (Bars Street)
• They serve food (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and drink and have various special offers on shots and cocktails etc, for different days of the week
• Social Pub is open daily until 2 am 
• You can view Social Pub on our map of Turkey

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