The next day, we meet the famous Mr. Mousavi. It turns out that he really is a wizard, and he starts out by helping us to exchange some Dollars in to Rials. For this he recommends an office that is specialized in these matters, and we get ready to go there.
The ever-helpful Mr. Mousavi at the Firouzeh Hotel
As we step out of the hotel, a quiet «poh-goook» lets us know that there are chickens living on the hotels’ doorstep, and we were disturbing them.
Chickens on the doorstep
Sorry, but in between the heat, the chickens and the man making tar in an old oil-drum next door, our senses were on a bit of an overload this early in the morning.
Making tar in the streets of Tehran
We go out into Tehran and meet the city’s famous day-time traffic.
It’s insanity that somehow seems to work, as there is hardly any screeching of car brakes or crushing of pedestrians’ bones to be heard.
According to UNICEF, each year, road traffic crashes kill nearly 28,000 people in Iran, and injure or disable 300,000 more. That means, every 19 minutes one person dies on Iran’s roads, and every two minutes people will hear that one of their family members has survived a crash but with serious injury and perhaps lifelong disability.
Navigating our way through this chaos, we can definitely believe it.
Traffic on a slow day in Tehran
We make our way to the exchange office in the sweltering heat. Tehran is relatively dry, so the 51°C we notice on the digital readout of an ATM is bearable. Barely. Lars still wants to try and see if he can get something out of the machine, but besides some beeps he gets nada.
Hot day in Tehran
The day is spent exploring our immediate surroundings, and we soon realize that Iranians are big believers in specialization: this means if your neighbouring shop sells car batteries you better do the same! Or at least sell things in the same realm, that’s why in all the cities in Iran that we’ve passed, there are whole streets dedicated to just one theme: there are washing machine-streets, car parts-street, nuts’ streets (the kind you eat), fabric-streets, hi-fi streets and much more.
Remotes in hi-fi street
We are in Tehran to get our Uzbek visas, so we try and find the consulate. When we get there (on the other end of the city, of course), there is already a queue forming outside the gate. Some Iranians who seem to work for a visa-service have brought with them stacks of foreign passports and are ahead in line. Shit.
Still, it only takes an hour or so and Snorre gets his visa, while Lars is told he needs a Loi (letter of invitation). The same type of letter the Uzbek consulate in Istanbul had told him he definitely didn’t need, as he has a German passport and they are golden. And the Uzbek Embassy in Berlin told us that none of us needed a Loi in the first place.
Bureaucracy at its finest!
The lady behind the gate tells us that in lieu of a Loi it’s enough to get a letter of recommendation from the German Embassy – so that’s what we would have to do.
We’d met a French and Polish couple who’d had the same problem. The French guy told us it’s no problem to get such a letter from your embassy. They even did it for free.
Great!
Wednesday turns in to Thursday, and we start off by going to the German Embassy early. They don’t open until 9.30, but we’re there at 8am. Hah.
Except 200 other people’d had the same idea – some of them getting there as early as 4am!
The German Embassy in Tehran
Lars is getting pissed off at the past weeks’ bureaucracy and standing in line for little bits of paper. Days of frustration are released and he does the unthinkable: he goes to the front of the queue and dares anyone else there to complain!
Turns out nobody complains at this display of arseholery, as many of the people standing in line think he works at the Embassy, being German-looking and arrogant. He is even approached several times by people who have questions («Is this the right queue?», «What forms do I need?», «Where do I go to complain/Get a new passport after losing mine in a moped-accident?») and he tries to answer as best he can, which isn’t really saying a lot.
When the door finally opens, an official-looking man takes a look around at the sea of people, points to Lars and tells him to get in.
Now to wait inside.
One hour and a very nice conversation with some other people waiting inside later, and he is told that the document he needs is ready, but comes with a paper-pushing fee of 1 million Rials. About €25. Where the French and Polish Embassies perform this service for free for their citizens, Germany apparently is too poor to do the same.
Whatever.
Consular Certificate from the German Embassy for €25
Getting a taxi and racing back to the Uzbek Consulate is getting routine. The queue today is about the same as last time, so we are not worried.
Until the asshole from last time shows up.
Remember the guy with his stack of passports? As we don’t understand Persian and everyone around the gate seems to know this passport-wanker, we are at a bit of a loss as to what to do. The other Westerners waiting are starting to grumble as well, as what seems to be one Iranian after the other gets to go through the electronically operated gate.
When passport-dick goes through the gate for the second time, we can’t take it anymore!
In what can only be called an invasion of the Uzbek consulate by Western forces, we push aside the bastards who only want to keep us from our rightful visas and go up the stairs to visa-lady, she who has the power (yes, by this point we are quite insane).
It seems that everything is now in order with my papers, but I have to wait a week for my visa to Uzbekistan.
If I’d had a Loi, I could’ve gotten it within the hour.
Fuck!
We decide to not wait any longer. We’re already spectacularly late – first in Istanbul, now in Tehran. Actually, all this has taken so long that we now need an extension to our Iranian visas, so as not to be detained and thrown in jail or deported when we try to cross the border!
Talking about being detained: this information is quite practical
Luckily, this is not the most difficult thing to do. After talking to Mr. Mousavi at the Firouzeh Hotel, the most complicated thing is to actually find the Visa Extensions Office, as it has moved four times in as many years.
We put our faith in the Great Hotel Manager, and sure enough: he doesn’t disappoint.
A fast & furious but not-so-quick taxi ride later, and we’re at the Visa Extensions Office from which people are spilling out on to the street, as if from a monster that has had too much to eat. We enter and are told to surrender our mobile phones (mmm…ok) and our laptops to the uni-browed officers before we get in.
We are telling them that this is definitely not going to happen!
And we get away with it.
On the next floor, we behold a beautiful scene: orderly desks in the corners, potted plants and curteous and effective officials greet us. People are standing in line without bickering and the AC blows cool air at our scorched faces. A beautiful chādor-clad nymph welcomes us in perfect English and tells us to wait for at most half an hour. Would we like some tea and scones with that?
Or would you believe this version:
When we get up the stairs into the seventh circle of hell, we can’t really understand the system. There are approximately five lines near one wall, with post office-like cubicles; a desk manned by some soldiers who randomly tell people to get more papers, give the soldiers some money or fuck off; an office where a middle-aged man in police uniform sits and puts a stamp on some papers after seemingly validating them with his moustache; and a tiny room off to one side, where you can get photocopies of your passport, hands or butt for 10 000 Rials. Add to this about 50 people per square meter, all of whom don’t have the right papers, and you’ll get the picture.
Iranian visa extension
We won’t bore you with the details, but they include standing in the wrong line, getting given some papers to fill out in duplicate, being told to go to a specific bank and pay 300 000 Rials each before coming back with the receipt, whereupon we would get in to see moustache-guy and then wait for an answer.
We did all this and they told us to come back next week.
Screw that.
We start to explain that we need the extension NOW, we’re going to Turkmenistan in a few days and our Iranian visas expire tomorrow, and we can’t wait many days, we’re already late and don’t want to get arrested, pretty-please, can we have it now, maybe in half in hour? No tea necessary.
In the end, the whole charade takes us 4 hours instad of one week.
Chalk up one to the good guys 😉
Snorre has a Titanic-moment
It’s Friday and most offices are closed today and tomorrrow as it is the weekend in Iran. These two days you can’t get any official business done, whereas Sunday the work week starts anew.
The broadband (we have to call it something) everywhere is painfully slow. If it doesn’t quit on you completely, it has intermittent hiccups that make your laptop, phone or whatever drop the connection randomly. Also, several sites and online services are blocked in this country (among them Facebook, Twitter and Norwegian Google Maps, for some reason) and so we feel offline enough that we ask Mr. Mousavi whether he has any suggestions for us for stuff to see in Tehran on a Friday. He tells us to go visit the City Park which is one of many lovely parks in Tehran.
Rollerblading in Park-e-Shahr
Fifteen short minutes later and we’re in a nice green area, where lots of locals go to picknick. Tehran’s City Park is big, and there are pieces of art scattered among the fountains and petting zoos with birds, snails and possums.
Art in the park
After taking a corner we get close to what seems to be a political site, as there are banners that, well, ahh… -just look at the picture below, will you?
Another corner later and we get to a section of the park that apparently is created for the locals to keep in shape: there are all kinds of machines to help you keep fit, and some of them are actually in use by what seems to be business men in shirts and ties – probably out here for a quick cardio-vascular workout before going to the next meeting.
Fancy a workout in the park?
On Saturday we go to the Bozorg Bazaar.
A fountain out of the way from the worst bazaar-traffic
This is great. Amid people telling us that they know the Norwegian Ambassador and wouldn’t we like to buy a handmade Persian carpet just like him to take home? we look at stalls selling fabrics, sweets, lurid underwear in neon colours (because what you wear underneath your chādor is your own business), hats, chess boards and much more.
Carpets in the Bozorg bazaar
We don’t want any of it, but are interested in getting to the spice bazaar to have a look and a sniff.
After a while it seems to us that this section of the bazaar doesn’t exist, since every time we ask someone they either don’t know what we’re on about (go ahead and try to mime «spice» to someone who doesn’t understand anything you say), or send us off in directions that lead to anything but.
Never mind.
We start going back to the hotel, amid the undulating traffic.
After a while we realize that the greatest danger in Iranian traffic isn’t really from the lorries, buses or kamikaze-cars, but the mopeds.
At a careful estimate there are about 700 thousand billion trillion of them weaving in and out of traffic at any time, not caring whether there are cars, people or buildings in the way. They also don’t care which direction the traffic flows, since they are quite happy to drive towards you in a one-way street or jump the curb and continue among the pedestrians.
Now multiply by 100, and you’ll be getting close.
This guy actually asked us to take his picture
It’s Sunday, and Snorre is off in the morning to deliver the application for the final visa to Turkmenistan (cue soul-destroying Turkmen theme-song). Lars is not coming along as he can’t get the Turkmeni transit visa, because he still doesn’t have the one for Uzbekistan (cue «Send-in-the Sith»).
The Turkmenistan Embassy actually requires that you have the visa for the country you are transiting to before being allowed to apply for their visa. All this will take too long, so the way we see it we have 4 possible scenarios:
- Give up and go home (not an option).
- Drive back to Georgia and go into and through Russia all the way to the Mongol border. This is because we only have 2 entries in our Russian visas, and the second entry we need to get out of Mongolia and back in to Russia.
- Go from Iran through Afghanistan all the way to Tajikistan. All official sources (and the unofficial ones too) strongly advise against it (see map below).
- Snorre drives alone through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and meets up with Lars in Tajikistan as he can take a plane from Mashhad to Dushanbe.
The orange areas are dangerous and the red ones more so
Seems like we’ll go for scenario 4.
Snorre hopes to get his Turkmenistan transit visa in 4 days, but is being told that he can pick it up in Mashhad the following Sunday.
So we are stuck in Iran for another week.
We’ll better make the best of it, so we decide to head out of Tehran the following morning to have a look at what the rest of this country has to offer.
Check this out