Journey to Iran

The Journey

We recently spent 14 days in Iran, no, in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), and two days flying in and out, from Berlin to Istanbul to Shiraz coming, and Tehran to Istanbul to Berlin going. A full two weeks in a huge, largely arid country with fascinating people and enchanting ancient monuments and sites, like gardens. No, we did not visit the uranium enrichment facilities – but we saw that notorious installation peeking a bit above ground, most of it underground in a location that shall remain classified…

The journey was organized by the German-Iranian Friendship Society Berlin in cooperating with an excellent one-man travel agency called OrientExpressOnline. Yes, that it was, an express through thousands of years of distinguished history and brief views of the modern Iran. There were 13 of us, plus one outstanding guide, Harmut Niemann of Orient Express, and the Friendship Society person, an Iranian lady; Parto Teherani, I was the only one with an American passport and that was not unimportant, as we found out.

The official reason for the trip were visits to the famed Iranian gardens which have come under UNESCO protection as world cultural heritage monuments. The cities we visited – between vast stretches of the Iranian deserts – were Shiraz, Kerman, Tabas, Yazd, Na’in, Isfahan, Natanz, Kashan – almost Qom - and finally Tehran. Several thousand miles, or so it seemed, in a comfortable Volvo-powered bus.

Summing up

We are very happy to have visited Iran. With the gardens, the many monument sites and the old and newer cities, we learned a great deal about this very ancient conquering and much-conquered country whose contribution to world culture is remarkable. Being among the very few western tourists (we did see others, all in white, on their way to Mecca), we were welcomed centers of attention wherever we went and enjoyed that very much. It was quite obvious that Iran’s political, religious and economic situation is having a major impact on life in Iran. Tourists feel that, too, because investments in and experience with what tourists expect are somewhat lacking. Both Vietnam and Cuba are much more successful in that business – which is not high priority for the state in Iran.

And why Iran?

Well, if the choice is between Iraq, adjoining the country to the west, and Afghanistan, just over the mountains to the east, the decision was easy; by comparison, Iran is in a state of, well, peace. Seriously, I have had an affection for Iranians ever since I made friends with an Iranian boy at a Heidelberg, Germany, high school. He had been sent there by his Iranian parents; he later studied medicine in Germany.

And Hanne, my adventurous (Cuba, Vietnam…) wife, had long been friends with Parto Teherani who had just finished her long career teaching at Berlin’s Humboldt University. And that friend had long been encouraged by her German friends to take them to Iran. And so she did, the central purpose of the trip being extensive visits to those famous Iranian gardens.

The Country

The Islamic Republic is huge, five times as large as Germany, more like Alaska. It has been the crossroads for trade and migration for thousands of years, with the Silk Road just one of the examples of the country’s relation between Asia and Europe. A population of about 80 million resides in only 7% of the area, with the center a vast desert region, the Kavir desert – hundreds of bus miles long and wide as we found out. Huge salt lakes glisten in the thin air of the high plateau.

 

The severe economic situation of the country is well-known and its complicated background is better left to the experts. I briefed myself, of course, with the online CIA country report but I think there are probably other equally valid alternative description of the IRI. Obvious are the effects of the international embargo that has seriously curtailed the much-needed oil exports, capital inflows and financial transaction in general. Inflation is rampant and prices for the visiting tourists sometimes amazingly low – a good 12-ounce bottle of mineral water cost us about 15 US cents. We paid in rial, the local currency which we obtained in exchange offices; credit cards and ATM cards are not accepted.

The People

Aside from the glorious ancient sites, we most enjoyed coming in contact with many, many Iranians, in hotels, in the bazaars, on the street, in the mosques – and in the elegant homes of a couple of Iranian artists and families. The hunger for contact with the world is great. Almost 70 percent of the Iranian population is under 25 and they are open and eager to talk. We don’t know if English is taught in schools, but most young people addressed us in English. Most signs highways and in towns are in English.

 

Iranians spontaneously told us that they have no anger against foreigners. They would ask us to “tell your friends that Iranians want to be friends”, but their own government – and that of the West, like America, are the problem. Those comments were very specific when the Iranians we were talking with learned that I am an American.

Veils and Make-Up

Both men and women in Iran are generally quite handsome, the women – what I could see of them – especially attractive. All women must be veiled with at least a headscarf when outside their own home. Even tourist women are forced to wear a scarf at all times in public, starting on arrival at an Iranian airport. Many younger and older women wear the chador, the head-to-toe black garb that leaves only the face to be seen.

In contrast, most scarfed women were exceptionally well dressed, in jeans, flashy dresses, high heels – and make-up to kill. The contrast of the make-up with the veils is stunning. I was very much annoyed with the absolute demand on women to wear veils. Our own tour group ladies wore them at all times and I confess that made me angry, not at them, of course, but at the oppression of a religion.

Religion all Over

Would a western country demand of Iranian tourists that they wear a cross around their neck starting at the airport arrival, in, say Frankfurt – or that men wear a monk’s tunic? The demands of the Iranian theocracy pushed me to the limits of my patience but I kept quiet. Privately, I reacted to the thousands and thousands of large faces of the current or former religious leaders on buildings, in shops, in restaurants with my own personal not altogether positive feelings.

Iran is basically a theocracy where the senior religious leaders have the ultimate decision powers over all aspects of life. The large number of mosques, of course, have always been there, but the powers of the Islamic Shiite religion has become absolute after the revolution of 1979.  We were surprised to learn, however, that in the last thirty years the attendance in mosques has fallen off significantly. Only Friday Prayers are meagerly attended, often with believers bussed in from the countryside to fill the mosques.

Being Watched While Watching

Having an American passport turned out to be a problem from the start. I had checked with the Berlin US embassy and they assured me that traveling to Iran is not restricted in any way. But the Iranian Berlin consulate delayed issuing my visa and wanted more details of my past. When I got the visa in my passport, I noticed that it was for a shorter period than the trip was long. So, in the middle of Iran, I had to go through a tedious extension process. But there was a reason for that.

The tour management had been forced accept a special “guide” because of my presence in the tour. That had never happened to Hartmut, our experienced and respected German tour guide who is fluent in Farsi and married to an Iranian woman. The special guide was assigned to watch me and the visa extension gave the authorities another look at me – I had to appear in person and give fingerprints. The little “guide” spoke English, which may explain why he was picked; and he told me that he had studied in Oklahoma. I suspect he was retired military with special assignments when Americans visit. We got along well, he and I, and our tour had many a chuckle about the need to watch me when and wherever I pretended to take photos of official places. Which I did not do, of course.

The last time I had met Iranian military officers was at the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where, stationed as a First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, on the commanding general's staff, I met many of the senior officer of foreign armies that were students at that Army college. Little did I know that so many years later, in Iran....

Police and Military Presence

We frequently saw military installations, camps with tanks in front (no photos, Franz!) and young soldiers in the streets of the towns we visited. Police was only occasionally visible but we felt safe, even in the chaotic traffic situations we had to manage wandering from mosque to mosque.

Road checks, however, were quite frequent. On all cross-country highways, the major ones are well maintained and often beautifully decorated with flowers and flowering bushes. The tour bus would stop at a gated stop and the driver had to hightail it to a checkpoint and report whatever he had to report. Sometimes a policeman entered the bus and we just had time to snap on our seat belts. No passports were checked. The drivers are under very strict regulation to not exceed certain hours behind the wheel – which once, in the middle of the night, forced the tour to request a new driver from a far-away city, our goal. Our man had reached his limit and was not allowed to drive on.

The Tourist Experience

Food:  Eating out is not necessarily a reason to visit Iran. We were told that a real public restaurant tradition had not developed and the menu tended to list the same dishes over and over. Nevertheless, in one ancient and charming hotel in Yazd, a family of cooks in the kitchen prepared for us a magnificent buffet that we all remembered in the other, much more modest establishments. That banquet was served on a great roof-top veranda, overlooking several mosques that glowed in their deep-blue glory as the evening sun set.

Hotels:  Aside from the discrete arrow on the wall pointing the believer in the direction of Mecca, rooms were normal, sometimes very modest tourist facilities. TV showed only Iranian programs, with one exception in Shiraz, a quite international city, which offered a CNN channel that did not show current news, however, only specials that CNN produces on life in other countries. Somewhat challenging are the ancient hole-in-the-floor toilets that always prove, ah, difficult for the age-challenged western visitors.

Historical Sites:  We were lucky to be guided on our tour by our extraordinarily well informed German guide Hartmut whose depth of knowledge of the history, architecture and art of Iran made trudging, sometimes at some distance, from site to mosque to ancient old town, a wonderful experience. A great example of Iran’s very long and distinguished history were the incredible ruins of the ancient palace at Persepolis which was built by Darius the First around 500 BC.

 

 

Gardens:  Our Berlin friend explained the dozen or so very special Iranian gardens, the official target of the tour. Their existence and importance is rooted in the unique Iranian topography – vast high deserts and plains surrounded by bare mountains, some over 15,000 feet high. Historical Iranians (the list of tribes and invaders and empires in Iran is very long indeed) learned to carve tens of thousands of miles of man-high tunnels (“quanats”) into the rock underground, starting at the base of sometimes snow-covered mountains. Their waters were guided underground to settlements and towns – and into the gardens that gave them the appearance and function of lush oases in the deserts. Iranians take great pride in these, mostly square, gardens that are watered by open channels of water that flow through the gardens in the form of a cross ( + ). Trees and bushes and flowers make these gardens truly lush oasis. UNESCO recognized the Iranian gardens are a significant world cultural heritage and right they are.

Mud Walls and Towns:  A remarkable – and oh so photogenic – sight in most the old cities we visited were sometimes quite ancient mud wall structures. Often devastated by the earthquake-prone tectonics of Iran, the mud structures are truly amazing and we could not get enough of these structures, sometimes huge citadels, sometimes small village buildings.

Bazaars:  Of course, we visited all the bazaars we could walk to. The greatest one we enjoyed was in Isfahan, at one end of a huge restored square dotted with large mosques on two sides, an ancient palace on the third – the bazaar on the fourth. Compared with the bazaars we have seen in Egypt and Turkey, the Iranian variety often have artisans of many kinds hammering and carving and creating their beautiful crafts. The ancient handicraft skills are alive and well in the bazaars where alas few tourists have a chance to admire them. We found the atmosphere in our meeting tradesmen and artisans most pleasant because, as compared to the rough and pushy store keepers in, for example, Egypt, Iranians in the bazaars where without exception polite and responded to our inquiries only when asked.

Almost in Qom and then Tehran

We much wanted to walk through the inner sanctum of Shiite Iran, the ancient city of Qom. But our Iranian driver refused to take the bus to even the outskirts of the holy city, we don’t know why. Here the real power of the Iranian state resides, where the revolutionary leader Khoemini went after toppling the Shah. We saw his, Khoemini’s immense multiple-mosque burial place, but only from the parking lot near it. I was glad not have to pay respect that man in his mausoleum.

A short bus ride took us to Tehran, capital city of Iran, an immense, 15-million people metropolitan area, where we ended our exploration of the country. The snow-covered Elburs mountain range towers over this busy, noisy city. It is dotted by a large number of meticulously maintained parks that we enjoyed. We visited the, surprise, surprise, beautifully restored residences and palaces of the last shah, Reza Pahlevi and those of his father, the first of the so-called dynasty (the father appointed himself emperor after a brief career as army sergeant).

 

Not many foreigners visit Tehran, it seems. So few in fact, that postcards of this great city were nowhere to be found! How could we prove to family and friends that we actually were there? The city’s newsstands also offered not a single foreign newspaper or magazine – only an English-language news summary issued by a government agency that carefully selects only the blandest of news stories.

From our bus, I saw the huge American embassy, its walls covered with massive propaganda slogans, site of the infamous hostage-taking in November of 1979, lasting until January of 1981; in another city, we saw a large roadside billboard, in the middle of town, that thanked Allah for sending a sandstorm to down the U.S. helicopters that were making an attempt to free the American hostages in Tehran.

In and around Tehran and all over Iran we noted that cities are well taken care of. While many new building skeletons remind one that the severe shortage of capital is pinching Iran badly, we were surprised, over and over, by the care cities take to landscape roadways with trees and flowers, not only in parks. We compared this to our modern German cities, like Berlin, where tight budgets are reducing or eliminating landscaped public spaces. This desert country relishes green and blossoms and lovely park areas in cities and villages.

I noted that building construction, as little as there was being completed, always showed a special earthquake-safe design – strong steel vertical and horizontal beams, with crisscrossed wall spaces to stabilize the finished building. Iran has suffered terrible earthquake disasters in recent years and is taking care to minimize damage with that unique design.

Prost!

The scarves of our German friends came off once in the airplane to Istanbul. Our two weeks on the wagon, not a drop of booze anywhere to be had or seen, much less allowed, were finally ended on the very comfortable and pleasant Turkish Airline plane back to Frankfurt from Istanbul. We toasted a wonderful visit to a fascinating and great country. Prost!