Iran - People

We are after our trip and returned to home with lots and lots of positive experiences and memories. The following posts will be divided into two categories:
Iran - topic: I just would like to highlight some topics about Iran how we saw it. These are just our experiences, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will happen to everyone in the same ways.
City story: I just mention our route and what kind of beauties we saw on the way.

This entry is about the lovely iranian people in general.

Welcoming

"Mister, how are you?" "Hello" "Welcome to Iran, welcome to my city" - countless times. Sometimes it's just a welcoming, sometimes they want to speak with you a bit, maybe they want to make a selfie with you. Still not so many foreign tourist visits their country, so they are deeply honoured to see one and talk to them. For example this man insisted on taking a photo with him, but we didn't even speak a word :)

Curiosity - You cannot imagine how curious they are. The topics they are most interested in:
- where are you coming from
- marital status and your family in general
- how do you like their country, what did you like the most,
- if they can help you somehow
- what is the general oppinion about Iran in your country
- how things work in your country and how much is your salary :)

Hospitality - They want to help you all the time. While travelling with a night bus from Tehran to Kashan a young couple invited to their home to have some rest in daytime and the guy will show us the centre in the afternoon. To top this: they didn't speak english, not a word, so finally I could use my english-farsi translator. Tourists are highly respected in this country.

Invitations - I could hardly count how many times were we invited to tea, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Every of them is totally unexpected: you are in a juice selling shop, and the owner don't want to let you out until you have breakfast with them. Or you are having a rest in a museum and two university student guys invites you to one of his home to have lunch with his family.

Wandering in Tabriz bazaar and asking carpet sellers where can you buy water and they are inviting you to their shop to have tea with them while they bringing you free cold water. In Esfahan one night we ordered two falafel sandwiches to take it to Khaju Bridge and listen to the singing people, and the owner guy didn't let us pay: "for you it's free, my friend". But you have to pay attention to this custom, because it's common in Iran and called ta'arof. You have to refuse these offers at least three times, and if the bidder is still insisting on their offer, you can accept. On another day we were just walking to the bus station with our big backpacks, and a man who was on his way to his workplace invited us to his office to have a tea with him. Cases like this really happens to you 4-5 times a day.

Fashion

Make up, make up, make up. Even on some trendy boys :) But for girls it is necessary. Our theory is that they have only their face uncovered and they want it to look like "perfect". Women have to wear hijab all the time. In bigger cities women usually dress more liberal way like these "powerpuff girls" (please note the selfie-making woman next to them!), but women who are very religious are wearing black chador all the time, in 40 °C also...

For men the only obligation regarding to dress code is long trousers. Men usually are wearing casual clothes, even if they go for some jogging or doing workout in the park.

Plastic surgery is connected to this topic.

Most popular types are lips and nose. It's a phenomenon among young women, but I've seen two guys also. I think in these countries this is caused by media, and it seems they have did it well: somehow they changed the concept of ideal of beauty and that's why lots of women feels now they have to do this surgery to find husband easier or to be accepted better by their husband. I don't know the reasons just guessing...

Musicality

We are live music lovers and we thought Iran will be a paradise for us and we can listen to eastern music everywhere: teahouses, on the streets, live concert halls. Well, no... Iranians really like traditional persian music, you can here it everywhere, but to catch it live it's a really hard quest. It is kind of "illegal" there to have fun, make music in bigger community, unless it is not connected to religious rituals, happenings. We asked local people: in older times they had live events not just in teheran, but in bigger cities also like Shiraz, Kashan. But nowadays it's only possible to attend events like this in Teheran. In other places it's only possible in bigger hotels and fancy restaurants, but in our oppinion it is not the most authentic way, so we didn't check these opportunities. Our only and most meomrable moments were while we where listening to local singers under Khaju Bridge in Esfahan. It is something really special and absolutely amazing. Suddenly you realise that here are these hidden gems with this musical knowledge and it's hard for them to find opportunites to get in contact with their audience. People come, listen to the lovely music, and if the crowd becomes big, police come. People go away. A singer starts again, people come and the game continues like yin and yang.

Working

I had a feeling that lots of people are just sitting in a shop as a seller because they don't have better things to do and they want to spend time. I am going to write a seperate blog entry about just shopping and shops but a picture like this is very common while you are walking on the streets, in the bazaar. People in summer are exhausted, and in the middle of the day they often have long siesta, or even closing their shop. Between 12-15 hours it's better to find a cool shelter in a teahouse or in a garden for example, because life is practically stops in cities. As I saw the average active working times are starting aroung 8-9 o'clock and lasts until 12. In the afternoon life starts again around 15 o'clock and most of the shops are closing only at 22 o'clock. The situation is not better for people who are not sellers neither. We've met an aircraft engineer who works from 8-20, and with a driver in Teheran who worked 15 hours that day.  If you want to have better life, one job is not enough here. 

Military service

You can see lots of soldiers on the streets, on bus stations. Iranian men have 2-years military duty, and until they haven't served it, they are nnot allowed to go abroad. We've met a tour guide who managed to exchanged his active soldier duties with teaching in a school, so it is a flexible system as we saw it. Many of them - like this guy - have to serve in a mosque as a guard.

Room 107 (aka crossing Turkey-Iran border)

The border procedure for pedestrians is quite easy and fast at Bazargan. We had to take off from the bus, I got all of our luggage to carry and one of the guys put a strange bag to Sabina's hand to carry it to the iranian side. This was the first really strange moment. Nobody checked bags, we entered Iran. If you arrive you can exchange dollars/euros/liras to rials from stranger men. The exchange rate is quite OK, but in cities you'll get more for your money. At the border we got 3.100.000 rials for 100 USD, which means 310.000 tomans (19 Aug 2015). The next conversation was between Sabina and a random guy: "-You married? Do you need a boyfriend? -No. -And husband?" After this a french biker girl entered to Iran from the building full of bags and equipments. Alone. She was totally stressed. I wouldn't advice for women to travel alone in Iran. It isn't dangerous, but for sure it is totally stressful. Especially for western women I think iranian men have some preconceptions. We were waiting there for the bus to be inspected around 2-3 hours long. We asked a guy from our bus where is toilet, and he show it to us, but there was only Men WC. He said there isn't one for women so both of us should use this one. While I turned my back and went to one booth he insulted Sabina. This was the point where we realized that from now on we have to be more cautious, stick together all the time and emphasize that we are married. Good lesson in the beginning of the trip. After this I signed the guy that he is totally on a wrong way unless he wants to get in trouble. We waited for our bus, and started our trip from the border late evening in the dark and waited to get to Tabriz. In Bazargan they had some good Benny Hill scene-like event: Guys came to the bus and ran away with the strange bags. These motherfuckers woke us up in the at night in the middle of nowhere. Shouted to get off and get to another bus. Suddenly they wanted money for the ride, but obviously we didn't know how much. Woke up suddenly at night, barely remembered to exchange rate they made a ~50$ ripoff by just picking out banknotes from my hand. I told him 3 times in farsi that it's too expensive but these azeris speak total different farsi and obviously he didn't wanted to understand. So just a goood advice: if you are going with an iranian vehicle (except truck) always ask for the price before getting in. The best if he writes down and you have the money in hand to show him. In the big hurry of exchanging bus my old Nokia phone slipped out from my pocket. It was the first victim of the trip. The second bus dropped us at the highway around Tabriz. After getting to the centre at late night, we found a cheap hostel and decided to spend there the night. We were totally exhausted, full of bad experiences and in our room the temperature was around 35°C. I just imagined the first scene of "Apocalypse now", because the situation was similar. Except we didn't have ventillator. And the room number was again… 107.

Trans-Turkey

Driver 13 - 17:30-23:45 After getting out of Istanbul we finally reached the E80 highway. Considering there were no petrol stations nearby we decided to try hitchhiking aftrr a tollgate where everybody slows down. After 5 minutes a Mercedes truck stopped and signed we will give us a ride. A very funny truck driver ead our company, he was on road for a week from Russia and transported corn or chicken from Ukraine (we couldn't understand properly) to Syria. The connecting language was again some kind of russian. In every 10-15 minutes we called his lover Lena who was a nurse in Odessa. Sometimes he used skype video call. After one hour we stopped because he had to repair his truck. We looked after the trailer while having some turkish teas and had some conversations with a very kind waiter guy who was happy to practice his english skills. He was a university student in Gerede, the place where we were heading to. Our driver became very strange at a time on the road because he said he is calling again her lover and wants Sabina to say hello to her, but a guy voice replied. We think we misunderstood the situation and it was some strange humour. He called his friend and wanted to joke him with a female voice like his lover would be travelling with him to Syria. In the middle of the night we stopped at a some kind of diner for truck drivers. It was like stepping into a Secret Universe.

I don't know what happened, who ordered what, but eventually we payed a lot and got food. It turned out that not just we, but our driver payed more than normal price too. There were some catfight, after all we got back our money.

We arrived to a very good highway stop just before midnight: Metro bus stop for night buses. We could use the wifi of buses there. Found a good place for tent near the petrol station.

When we woke up in the morning a waiter brought us tea to the tent. We were totally amazed.

This is the last pic with my camera, it broke down and until Tabriz I couldn't fix it. We had breakfast there and after that we got a ride.

Driver 14 - 09:15-14:45 - Selati picked us up with a Mercedes truck. He was a very nice old guy, that typical grandpa type. We didn't have common language. When he wanted to ask something important he called his son Hassan who knew some expressions in english. We stopped for some tea and while I went to toilet he ordered two turkish pizzas. Sabina was sleeping in the truck and he ordred for her another one also. The turkish culture is basically based upon tea drinking, for all social activitoes is a must-have. I was just sitting there and saw these men socializing, the waiter always brings new tea, just like with beer drinking in Czech Republic. Selsti was really bored sometimes on the road so he played with different games on his phone while driving. I didn't see exactly with what he is playing with, but my favourite was when he had to shoot cocks with a gun or something like this.

Driver 15 - 15:55-00:15 - After this I had the biggest experience in this trip. A full-extra VW minibus stopped for it. First we was thinking whether we want to sit in or not. There were five strange guys traveling with a big minibus, it was suspicious. Stereotypes… We stopped really soon, it was lubch time. After we had tea and watermelon they invited to their table and to eat with them from their food. No english, only basic turkish. They didn't understand why am I eating whole chilli paprikas, I just said "Majaristan". The driver was Hakim Tas and as it later turned out the whole bunch was kurdish and they were really proud about it. They worked in Istanbul and once per a week they did the Istanbul-Karayazi route. Please, check it on map… They were the most lovely persons I've ever met. If there wouldn't be so many problems nowadays around the Kurdish territory I would definetely go there for a bigger trip. They were totally unbelievable, anywhere we stopped they bought us something as well: fruits, tea, food. Roaming through the kurdish land and listening to this piece was really memorable

Sivan Perwer - Mihemedo Sorkisi

((There was a strange thing we realised ongoing from this point of the trip: men did not talk to Sabina directly. If they wanted to say something to her, they asked for me first. Like if I would be the responsible for her or just a "mediator". This phenomenon just became more stronger in Iran, for example yesterday evening we had a situation that two guys with whom we've spent the whole afternoon told me to tell Sabina to put up her shoes, because she can easily step into broken glass. And we were walking together, next to each other however they were speaking to me. Totally different than in western cultures.))

There were times when they changed Hakim or as they called him The Kapitan. Then he cqme to sit close to us, mostly he rested and joked but there was a moment when wanted to telk us about the actual situation with Kurdistan. He show us news, facebook, pictures, everything. Without languages I started to feel that I understand every of his sentences. He was full of pain and grief. It was so touching I almost started to cry. We did not know ecactly where they're going to drop us off, but actually we've spent 10 hours with them and after midnight we got out in bus/truck stop - petrol station - "restaurant" -  "" motel"" complex. They adviced to rest there and continue our trip tomorrow to Iran with a truck. From there it could be easy, because lots of iranian drivers stop there.

We went to the motel, maybe it was a bad idea, but wanted to have a shower finally. There was a manager in a big hairy coat like as he would be working in a siberian petrol station and show us to go away. After this he let us in again, he woke up 2 guys from a room for us to have room and signed that he wants money. Regarding to the thickness of dirt everywhere it was quite expensive (around 10-15 euros) but we could only think about shower. After all the hygienic situation was so bad in the room we decided to have shower only in the morning (of course it was cold) and sleeping on our karimata and polifoam :) The room number was 107. It will be important in the next post. In the morning we were having breakfast in the sunshine next to the petrol station and of course a waiter brought us free teas.

Driver 16 - 09:45-¿?¿ - We wrote Dogubayazit to our table and a man approached on foot. "Hello Mister, can I help you?" and I think that was half of his engkish knowledge. His name wss Omid. They were with an iranian MAN Bus, VIP firstclass, everything. Was really strange that 5 people were on a bug iranian longdistance bus. Later we figured out that maybe they are on an unifficial route and just picked us up. They had really big and strange luggages at the iranian border, obviously smuggled something. We had really long stops, illegal petrol stations, 2 hour siesta at the Ararat :) They invited us for lunch also: simole rice and fish dish, they made it at the illegal petrol station, which was one of their friend's. We wanted to stop at Dogubayazit to fix the camera and to buy hijab for Sabina, but they said there were some kurdish terrorist activity in the last 2 days there and the bazaar is closed there. They were right. At this point we were not suspicious yet. At the borded things became strange and after that worse. On August 19th 16:45 we have reached the iranian border at Bazargan, but this story will be in the next post.

Our whole route on map

The road to Asia

We are in Asia finally. But how did we get here?

So let's pick up the line with the iranian truckdriver in Pitesti.

Driver06 - 12:30-14:00 - After we saw the strange licence plate, we greeted him with a loud "Salam". We drank tea with him and started talking about Iran. He suggested us a better road through Turkey than we planned. Basically it's E80 road he suggested: Gerede, Osmancik, Merzifon, Amasya, Niksar, Erzincan, Erzurum. Don't go on the north seaside, nor the south part (especially not in this political situation) and the best to avoid Ankara as well, because Trans-Turkey trucks and travellers don't go there. We learned some basic persian expressions and after that he had to stop to rest some hours on the ring around Bucharest.

Driver07 - 14:30-19:30 - A bulgarian Renault trailer packed with 3 cars and a following german car stopped next to us.The bulgarian guy in the german car was really strange at first. Let's say he was a simple guy :) He offered to give a ride and after we put everything inside he said we will sit in the trailer with his friend. We said Ok, but we won't leave the bags in another car. Then as we closed the trunk, the license plate suddenly fell off and we burst out laughing. We managed to it back somehow until the guy returned, and while we were heading to the trailer we heatd that he had thecsame problem and it fell off again. The best part of the story is that he overtook us after between the romanian and bulgarian border at Russe, and then we saw that he put back the german license plate upside down… ee entered Bulgaria at 16:00. The driver Salim told us he's a car mechanic in his home village Ruen near the city Ajtos and he offeted that we can go until then with him. So we changed our original route plan to enter Turkey in Edirne and decided to spend our night near the Black Sea which is really close to Ajtos.

Salim's and his friend's eyes were totally red, because they were driving directly from Stuttgart-Ulm region with the cars. I bought him one pack cigarette at the border.

Driver08 - 20:15-20:30 - Wv2 without speedometer, bat radio and a guy with funny inverse headtwisting. He took us to Ajtos and that was the point.

Driver09 - 21:30-22:00 - After some desperate experiments to get a ride in the dark (headlights and bike lamp) a young guy with a Mazda 323F stopped at the bus station and asked why did we write " more" in cyrillic to the cardboard (means "see"). It turned out that he and his girlfriend are just waiting for another girl and they are heading to Burgas to have an arabic music Saturday night party. They had two places so the took us to the center. In the city we decided to buy some beers and we are heading to the beach to bathe and out up our tent.

If you are ever planning to take a night bath in Burgas beach and want to use the equipments there (chairs, bed), don't pay to anyone there fo that. A strange guy asked 5 levas from us and I said I won't pay until he shows some papers he's a night guard there and anyways I have only 10 levas. Then he wanted 10 levas instead :)

Next day we were chilling a bit and then walked to Burgas center and got a ride to a parking place at the highway junction leading out of the city.

Driver10 - 11:15 - Ford Transit
There we had unexpected difficulties to get a ride to Malko Tarnovo, which is at turkish border. We decided not to take the road at the sea shore through Sozopol, rather we wanted to go on the shorter way. It started to get extremely hot on the sun.

Driver11 - 12:00-12:20 - Finally 2 strange guys picked us up with a big Dacia. They were going to Krusevac which is almost at half way to the border. Maybe this was our worst choice on the trip do far not because of them but the on the road there were nearly no traffic so ee felt it will be difficult to find another car going to Turkey. They were called Asin and Zlatko and they had bulgarian language skills only, but they drove that Dacia like it would be a Ferrari. And they were totally shocked when we said we are heading to Iran. (They asked our name like pointing at us and asking: "Adam? Eva?" - and I said we are not married)
In Krusevac after trying to get a ride for 20 minutes in the melting sun, we did something we've never done before: started to get a ride in both direction just to flee from that goddamn place.

Sabina had Malko Tarnovo and a turkish flag and I had Primorsko to get back to the seaside road. Obviously the turkish flag won, we knew that finally ine of the turkish drivers will get emotionally involved :)

Driver12 - 13:00-17:30 - our evil plan worked so after 15 minutes massive hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere resulted that we got our lucky ride to Istanbul. A lovely couple picked us up, I felt we were treated like their children on the whole way, they helped us everywhere. They continuously worried about if we have enough space back there because there was a bicycle as well next to us. We entered to Turkey at 14:45. There were 3 passport checking points, i don't know which was in the middle but we had to get out for that :) The couple invited us to coffee and cake. There were dtray dogs everywhere. The modt astonishing was if you wanted to get closer to them and give them food they ran away with fear. Hey bulgarians, solve this problem, they are there because of you!

The woman could speak russian, so they were communicating with Sabina mostly. She said their daughtet is studying and travelling a lot and now she's in Czech Republic. The typical moment: woman was afraid of Iran because of problems and war and the man said: "Iran? Very good! No problem!"

They dropped us out somewhere in the outer parts of Istanbul after suffering one hour in traffic jam. Then we took a metrobüs to the station Cevizlibag. It's a bus which goes above surface but in separate lanes and in the opposite direction (because stops are in the middle and doors are on the right side). Public transport works with jetons which you can buy from jetonmatik. Funny thing is there are people who are offering you letting in through the gate with their ticket thrugh for the same price with their own "ticket credit catd" but you don't have to bother with jetonmatik. Strange profession but in a metropolis like this you have to be able to survive somehow :)

In Cevizlibag we took the tram to Sultanahmet (center), but we wanted to have decent dinner first before srriving to the centrr where the prices are at least 2 times higher. I wad in Istanbul 4 years ago and I remembered to a very good dining place in Aksaray district so we searched for it and had an awesome meal for around 10 euros all together with tip. I highly recommend this place for everyone, waiters have total focus for guests and the they greet you as a friend long not seen. Ayran is super here.

We headed to the center to find a hostel in the streets behind Ayasofia. After we emptied our pocket in Best Island Hostel, we got 20 liras discount from original 80 liras (brakfast incl.). We wanted to exchange some money but the host guy said it's totally ok for polish and hungarian friends. Just walking around by night, having a nargile/shisha at "Happy Hole bar" (dangerous name hehe) with some really friendly drunk turkish guys. Lovely city, always a pleasure to come back. 

Next day we had to get out from the centre to get a good ride in the direction of Ankara. We took the ferry to Harem district, because there is a long distance bus station.

We tried to find a bus which goes to the direction of Ankara and drops out in the last ststion in Istanbul. For this mission entry level turkish knowledge didn't seem to be enough. We picked up the district Atasehir from the map and asking for this they adviced to just stay calm in one of the bus stops and a bus will come. For a better success I wrote the destination name to my bag.

Around 15 minutes waiting a bus came, slowed down. We wanted to pay the ticket, but it was a local bus and we needed to have a jeton for that. A local man helped us out and credited two tickets from his pass. He didn't accepted money after that. From the final station we walked around 3 kms to the highway. On the road there a guy asked us if he can help us and I said "Help? No, thank you! We are going to Ankara" - some hours later i just realised how funny this could have been for him.

So on the highway we went directly to a tollgate section, and after some minutes a turkish truck driver picked us up. but it's another story :)

Day1-2

After bathing in Black Sea and finding wifi at Fiesta Beach Club Burgas, here are some details about our trip so far.

First day route on map

First 2 days route on map

Driver01 - 17:00-17:40: hungarian office chick with Wv, she picked us up in 2 minutes and took us until Lajosmizse. She was tired, drank tons of redbull and went visiting her parents.

Driver02 - 17:50-18:30: a hungarian couple took us to Szeged. They were with Audi A8 and Bucharest license plate. Their hobby was sailing the european seas.

Driver03 - 19:00-21:00: a hungarian guy from Timisoara picked us up. He was with Seat. In 40 minutes we reached Romania and timezone changed  (+1 Hour). He talked about the IT life in Timisoara,and that they have around 700 it companies there.

Driver04 -22:15-02:15: after encountering some really creepy romanian guys at the petrol station in the outskirt of Arad, we had an extreme luck.

The romanian Santa Claus picked us up. He was heading to Brasov with a Citroen van.It was late night and 30 degrees. On the way he played nonstop BoneyM and randomly switched on his light effects.

After we arrived to a point near Sibiu where we had to get out I bought him two packs of Marlboros.

Found some place for camping and rested some hours.

We left early at the morning.

A gipsy guy wanted to steal our ride first,but the driver said "hey man i stopped for them not for you" :)

Driver05 - 09:05-11:30: he was heading to Pitesti with a Mercedes van.Dropped us out there near the highway and chose this artistic way to suggest us to pick a bus from to Bucharest.

After this we had huge luck because a very nice iranian Scania truck driver picked us up at the highway ramp leading to Bucharest. His first thing was to arrange a meeting with his friends in a highway stop, because he ran out of tea. They gave him hot tea and we were invited as well. It was unbelievable. // to be continued

Just a goodbye pic from this morning in Burgas

Hitchhiking to Iran

The plan in numbers:

- 2 passengers with 2 bags

- Whole distance to get there: Budapest - Bazargan (turkish-iranian border): 34 hours, 3000 kms

- First etap to Istanbul: 18 hours, 1450 kms 

Eating the last Túró Rudi and hitting the road from HERE

2 person Iran trip loaded

Our Iran trip launches on Friday 14th August 2015. The plan is to get there by hitchhiking. We have almost a month time to spend, our plane leaves from Tehran on 10th September.