Crazy Money

hullo there readers and welcome to this, the first posting from Iran. I arrived in Tehran yesterday morning having survived a pretty shitty train journey from Van in Turkey. I arrived at the station in Van on Tuesday at four o'clock thinking to myself "Jesus, I'm great... I'm here well in time for my 18.47 train to Tehran... isn't it amazing how precise these train times are!!!"... When I got to the station, everyone was telling me to go away, that there was no train to Tehran until the following Friday. Fuck sake, I thought to myself, but I ain't goin' anywhere. I had heard that the trains were kind of haphazard and tended to pop in and out whenever they liked, so, being the stubborn bastard that I am, I stuck my heels in and decided to camp at the train station until a train came. My train finally arrived at 01.00 on Wednesday and didn't budge until 08.00 that morning. At least they let us on and we could sleep on the train though. Then we went on our merry way towards the city of Tabriz in Iran. After spending half of the first day at Turkish customs and the other half at Iranian customs we finally arrived in Tabriz at 10.00pm on Wednesday evening, and then in Tehran at 9.00am on Thursday morning. Bit of a nightmare, but I actually slept quite well on the train and also I got adopted by an Iranian guy and his son who were in my couchette and they helped me do all the stuff that I needed to do (eat, survive the passport grilling etc.). They insisted on paying for everything and wouldn't let me put my hand in my pocket.

Once I arrived in Tehran, I stood there on the steps of the train station and I imagine I must have looked like your atypical lost westerner. This oul fella came up to me and started chatting away in English. He offered to show me the cheap way to my hotel (i.e. bus as opposed to Taxi) and on the way, we popped into his gaf for some lunch... what a nice old man he was! He wouldn't let me pay for the buses or anything and insisted on paying for everything.

So basically, I've been here a day and I haven't been able to spend any money yet. Which is a pity, cos I have buckets of the stuff. Because of the sanctions and various other anomolies, you can't actually get money into or out of Iran (I.e. our cards don't work in their atms etc.) so you have to bring enough raw currency to do you for the whole stay. When I was in Turkey, I armed myself with 600 Euros, hoping that this would be enough for a month in Iran. I went to the money exchange place and asked could I change it into Iran Rials. Your man at the counter exploded in laughter at the idea of me changing that much into Rials, he pointed at my backpack and indicated that I'd need to empty it to carry the Rials if I wanted to exchange that much. So I decided to exchange 150 Euro to begin with (as you can also exchange Euro within Iran) and your man took my three clean 50 Euro bills and overloaded me with literally hundreds of hundreds of Iranian notes... He also gave me a plastic bag with which to carry them. (I thought that was nice). Basically, my backpack has doubled in size due to the fact that I have Iranian notes stuck in every concievable pocket and the fuckers won't even let me spend them.

There's nothing else to report really... I've been walking around tehran looking for internet cafes (which are thin on the ground). This one is the first one I've been able to find. Other than that, I'm a happy little camper. Gonna start my touristy shit tomorrow (I.e. the grand baazar, various mosques, a museum or two... etc. ) but I'm taking it easy today, just walking around trying to orientate myself... I've had about five people walk up to me starting a conversation in English and they've all given me their email addresses... it's mad as a hatter! Oh and my Farsi is coming along slowly. I used the train journey to learn some of the basics and can now count to ten as well as your usual hello goodbye thank you and all that malarky. It's a good deal more difficult than Turkey because the written alphabet is different... But I've learned all the numerical digits in Farsi script so I'm battling my way through it. I'm not even going to bother with the alpha digits, it's fucking madness: شیلشسلیسیباسیبلغتعهنمهخههعهخمعهخمغعمهغعه ... See what I mean!

L8r dudes, and anyone's who heading to EP, I hope you have a ball! I wish I was going.
Yur man in Iran,
Conor