Discovering Iran #2

Elham let me know that I could start my clerkship at the hospital in the upcoming Saturday and that left me with a few days to gather my thoughts, get used to the heat, learning the best ways of wearing my veil and figuring out how the currency works. Camellia and Mahsa invited me and Sule to join them to the Sa’d Abad museum complex which is what used to be a summer mansion for royalties. I was still pretty tired from the day before but we headed out early in the morning to visit the museums. We took the metro to Tajrish which is in the north of Tehran and continued to the museum by taxi (as a side note, the north of Tehran is known as the nicer part where a higher income grants you fancy and comfortable homes in impressive apartment complexes). 

The metro (and buses for that matter) offers “women only” compartments which I’m sure ensures women a sense of security and comfort considering the rules  and norms of the Iranian society that puts a certain distance between men and women in the public scene. Many women prefer this option when travelling alone as entering the mixed compartment is in practice only done by women who are accompanied by a male relative, husband or pooooossibly a friend, though very uncommon. As a foreigner however it is acceptable to enter the mixed compartment though interestingly I also felt more comfortable doing so in the presence of other male companions. People stare, supposedly out of curiosity though, rather than making you feel ashamed.

On the metro, you’re bound to bump into men and women who are walking down the metro aisle carrying  hoards of items fitted onto their bodies, boosting their carrying capacities to the max. These are the famous metro sellers and believe it or not, people do in fact buy socks, dishwashing brushes, jewelry, perfumes and underwear on the metro, and probably for a good price too as you can hear them bargaining from the other side of the  wagon. 

We finally reached Sa’d Abad and Camellia and Mahsa managed to get me and Sule entrance tickets at the “Iranian” rate which saved us a serious amount of Rials (or Tomans… money in Iran is confusing!). We then strolled through the enormous complex of “104 hectares of spectacular mountainside parkland” according to the Lonely Planet (LP) guide. We went inside the White palace and the Green palace as well as a few other galleries in separate buildings within this massive luscious area. These palaces were both royal residences that were primarily used during the summer in the so called Pahlavi period. The mansions and galleries were built at different times in the early-mid 1900’s and have spectacular interiors, items gifted to the royals from all over the world and  the like. I felt it was all sort of similar to the likes of Dolmabahce and Topkapi in Istanbul so I didn’t feel all that bedazzled about visiting this place, but by all means worth the trip only for the sake of getting out of the city I think. Especially if you’re into mirror-tiles on the walls… And the floor. And the ceiling. 

Arash the Archer outside the White palace

That evening the incoming students were invited to Sahar’s house for a party.  She is the IFMSA Local Exchange Officer in Tehran and takes care of the incoming students so it was nice to finally meet her. Her family’s apartment is so shiny and nice and located in a neighbourhood in the north of Tehran, with an amazing view of the city! Sahar and her friend Mohammad had prepared some delicious dishes and we immediately felt at home, chatted and were introduced to some really nice Iranian music including a band called Pallett which I am not totally in love with- I’m even listening to the album Mr. Violet now as I’m writing this and feeling slightly melancholic *.* After a while the rest of the incoming students came along and we had a really nice evening. The guys went ahead to barbeque the chicken kebabs and I think this was the first time I tried the non-alcoholic mojito and beers for the first time in Iran! Super delicious by the way. We weren’t even expecting there to be lots and lots AND LOTS of food this evening so I probably ate the equivalent of 3 dinners in one night. They also served us some Faloodeh which is a type of Iranian ice cream made of thin rice noodles… and saffron of course! YUM. 

It got quite late and way beyond the dorm’s curfew which is at 10pm but we were having so much fun at Sahar’s place and were constantly hesitating to leave without actually going anywhere…. Entering the dorms later than this can be a problem for the Iranians though not so much for the foreign students, which is something  I had to learn how to deal with as I got a bit paranoid about what the ladies at the entrance would say whenever I came back “late”. The boys’ dorm was much more lenient about this than the girls’ dorm and the ladies at the entrance kept looking at us oddly whenever we came back late asking us to show them our “green card” which I didn’t even receive until 2 weeks into my stay…….. There would be an ongoing gesticulation war every time we arrived later than 10pm because they didn’t speak a word of English and we were complete beginners in Farsi. I can’t even begin to explain the frustration because they’d eventually let us inside the gate (like, what else were they supposed to do) after writing down our names in a book as some form of scaremongering. Apparently they make an angry phone call to your parents when you break the curfew rule more than x number of times. To be honest my mother would probably die of a heart attack if she got such a phone call in Farsi, probably thinking I’d been kidnapped or killed so I warned her early on that this was nothing to worry about!

Anyways, the girls ended up staying at Sahar’s place that night. Sabina, a Slovenian exchange student was going to leave Iran the following day so she went straight to the airport and Sahar drove the rest of us back to the dorm in the morning before heading to the hospital.  What a sweetheart!

In the afternoon we met up altogether at Valiasr square where Nina and Negar picked us up to take us to a place called the “roof of Tehran” which is at the base of Mount Tochal. We took buses and taxis as far as we could and then walked the last hilly bit to a flatter area with restaurants and lookout posts. People come here to socialize with their families in the evenings and on weekends; they play badminton, eat, go hiking and during winter people even go higher up the mountain using the telecabin to go skiing! According to LP it’s even the fourth highest skiing field in the world which is something I’d never think of…!

This was also the day I saw a selfie stick in real life for the first time. Nina totally rocked it and  got us all into pretty much every photo she took. We watched the sunset here and it was magical indeed.  Negar also helped me getting a simcard and INTERNETZ and I went around like a fat kid who’s been without sweets for a week who finally got his hands on a bucket full of cookie dough…. Everyone probably thought I was a lunatic at this point. 

 In the taxi to Tochal with Negar, Asbjørn and Marco

Views of Tehran before and after the sunset

Discovering Iran #1

Iran has tickled my curiosity, and during the last few days before leaving Norway I could barely believe that I was actually going to come here. Ever since we started to fly to Izmir through Istanbul I’ve always noticed the Iranian women put on their headscarves in the passport control line at the Ataturk airport on their way back to Iran and it has always had me wondering what it is like in the country where these women come from.

So now that I got the opportunity to visit I had to use my chance, and so far I could not be happier!

I hardly did any research before going except for simply buying the Lonely Planet Iran book. I also  check ed a few essentials on tripadvisor including the dress code for women, whereupon I was reassured about foreigners not being expected to wear traditional clothing such as the chador (“tent” in Farsi) which basically covers the body from head to toe like a cloak. I was convinced that covering my hips with a tunic would be essential, preferably down to my knees and wrists along with bottoms that go down to the ankles

 In reality the local people really can’t be bothered with the way you dress as long as you put your veil on and avoid imposing your cleavage onto everyone else. The many times I’ve seen a police officer in the eye with my veil halfway wrapped around my head has caused no problems whatsoever, so the rules of dressing are pretty easy to follow really. That being said I was obviously overly self-conscious about my hair showing when I put on my scarf for the first time on the plane as we were descending for Tehran. The intense gaze of the lady at the passport control counter was not exactly helping either (but I got through without problems and would dance of joy as I went down the stairs to pick up m luggage if I could! [more on how women should behave in public will follow])  Now after almost two weeks it has actually become a routine to pick out the scarf that will colour-coordinate well with my outfit of that day, though I still ponder on the symbolism and meaning of wearing it every day…

So at the airport in Tehran I waited for my suitcase for a solid 30 minutes until sometime around 2am and made conversation with a girl around my own age straight away; originally Iranian living in Brussels on her way to work on some filming project in Tehran if I remember correctly. She gave me her phone number along with a warm welcome to Iran and the opportunity of meeting up for tea during my stay here.

Then as I walked through the arrivals hall I was almost immediately met by a girl asking if my name was Nil followed by her mother giving me a huge bouquet of flowers and offering to take the luggage I was carrying in both hands! This was my contact person Camellia who I’d been in touch with a few days earlier. Her lovely mother found me a place to exchange some money at the airport before heading towards the city in their car. The first thing that struck me on the highway was the license plates with Farsi numbers looking like they’d been typed with Comic Sans MS. Took me a few days to take these seriously…! And I’ll get back to the traffic culture and what the Lonely Planet guide has to say about it later!

Arriving at the student dorm was slightly confusing and Camellia’s help was absolutely essential as I soon came to realize that English speaking people over the age of 35 can be hard to find and that the security guard fell directly into this category. At last I was placed in a dorm room right before 4am was, to my surprise, me by a girl who happened to be Turkish. Slightly confused though very positively surprised, Sule welcomed me and showed me the vacant bunk bed above Heba, a Palestinian- Syrian girl who was spending the night at a classmate’s place when I arrived.

Sleeping like an actual rock that night I apparently  managed to ignore several attempts at people trying to wake me up for various reasons such as telling me that I should transfer to another room, needing to wake up to organize my student ID card as well as food-card for picking up lunch and dinner in the dorm canteen. Then my second contact person Elham (who actually managed to catch my attention) came to my room to introduce herself and let me know when I could start to attend the surgery ward at the hospital. I was so knackered that I completely forgot half of what she told me and went directly back to sleep and woke up again in the afternoon and found Heba sitting on the mat on the floor eating something that smelled pretty delicious for lunch.  

So the rest of the afternoon was spent on the floor getting to know Heba and Sule, eating whatever was available for lunch and drinking tea, because that’s what you do in Iran- you invite people for food and tea in your house, on your Persian carpet if you have to, and share everything with your guests. When they politely decline you insist that they must at least 2 or 3 times, and that’s what we call ta-arof, which is a big part of the Middle Eastern culture.

Later that evening Sule and I went out to meet some of the other incoming students. Being completely unaware of what we were going to do I barely managed to run down to the shower room for a quick wash before heading towards the boys dorm (as guys and girls are obviously not allowed to stay in the same student housing complex). After the grand round of handshakes and exchanging names we headed towards Park Laleh; a lovely park with high trees, fountains and paths to get lost in, almost like a maze in certain places. Here we met even more students, both incoming students (or just “incomings”) like myself and other Iranians.  The group thus kept getting bigger and I started to get the sensation that this is a perfectly standard Tehrani situation. You gather all your friends together with your friend’s friends and hang out altogether in big spaces taking selfies and hanging out before heading somewhere to eat. And that’s basically the definition of a good time.  I’m in awe at how friendly people are here, and also really enjoying that food is such a central part of the culture and always regarded as a reason to get together.

So naturally most of us decided to go for some nighttime dining and I got in a car with 4 other guys to a place I later found out was called Ab-o Atash Park (water and fire park). We met up with the rest eventually and had a long awaited Kete Kabab in the food court. Iranians love dining out late at night and finding a table to fit all 10+ of us was close to impossible but a little bargaining with the staff by our Iranian friends solved the problem eventually.


  After walking around the very impressive bridges connecting the park to a forest on the other side of the highway we went back to the dorms. I switched rooms because another incoming student was going to leave the next day to even out the numbers in each shared bedroom, so my new roommate was a really lovely Tunisian girl called Balkis and Nastaran from Tabriz (Iranian medical student now working as an intern). By the time I came back to the room there was a crowd of girls sitting on the carpet as Balkis had sliced an entire watermelon for everyone! Sule and I joined the circle that was formed around a large plastic sheet to protect the carpet from the fruit juice and we chatted into the night. I had a really fantastic first 24 hours in Iran and looking back at it now it’s amazing to see that the experience has only gotten better and better!