bazaar like 1000 and 1 nights

One day after my trip to Iran a more specific update with some great pictures to give you an impression. While going through my pictures I had difficulties choosing which one to update, because for me they don't look that special. I, unfortunately, got already used to it. But I realize that for you these pictures are special, so I did my best to come up with some which will give you a short impression of my trip. Don't mistake this with an impression of Iran, as I hardly have seen the country or city Teheran. For that reason my pictures and story might be coloured...

On my flight over there, there were no signs at all that we were flying to Iran. I mean, no women dressed up like going there, no burka's no scarfs. This immediately changed after landing. While looking through the aircraft, the complete aircraft changed into a coloured, exotic one. Also for us as crew members we have to follow the restrictions of the government, which meant that before leaving the aircraft we had to get into a burka and wrap a scarf around our heads. There was one exception though: normally ankles should be covered as well, but with our uniform this is not possible.
The reason for this whole dress-up thing is that from what I understood this has got all to do with the male testosteron... If we would dress up like we wanted, men could get distracted and have difficulties to behave social accepted (to put it in a decent way).

Luckily for us we had no restrictions on our crew floor of the hotel. We could wear what we wanted, as long as we stayed on our crew floor and were not on the balcony. There are not so many possibilities to go out. To get a free taxi van, you should be with a minimum of 3 persons. Of course you could take a cab on your own, but this is not something that I would recommend being a woman.
On our crewfloor there is a special crewroom, which makes the stay over a lot easier. There is a small living room incl DVD player and a small diningroom. The most of the day I just spend over there. Other flight companies have their special floors as well, but we were not allowed to leave our floor, except for going to the groundfloor. This means that you get rather close with your colleagues, as there is nothing else.

In the afternoon I went with my sr purser and a colleague to a small bazaar. I was so glad that I got some colleagues to just leave the hotel for an hour. I desperately needed to get out! Felt like I was trapped in a golden birdcage. Finally I saw something of the city and it's inhabitants! In the taxi van I got a quick glance from behind my scarf. Cars are either brand new, western brands or very old ones, nothing in between. A lot of big images of the country leader, like the big photos of the Thai king in Thailand. It is such a strange sight to just see men or scarfs...
Anyway, the bazaar was nice. Very small shops with mainly vegetables, herbs and carpets. It was like walking in the fairy tale of 1001 nights. One shop was even prettier (read more traditional) than the other. Unfortunately the shops were lighted by very, very bright lights, which means that most of my photos don't give the atmosphere it deserves. The sr purser advised me to buy dates (= dadels in NL), as she said they are the best of the world over there. Well, I was curious, as in Tunesia last year, I simply had great dates as well.... But I have to admit, these are really the best I ever ate, melting on your tongue, that soft! I brought a pack home and mom, I'll save you a couple.
My colleagues bought some other vegetables as well, like peas. Sounds strange, I know, but also these ones seem to be the best of the world. Anyway, after getting back at the hotel, stepping out of the taxi, my colleague dropped his bag with peas and the complete taxi van was covered with a green carpet.... And of course we couldn't leave the best peas of the entire universe in this van, so we started to collect all these f**king small peas from the floor. As you can imagine, it took us a while :-)

The hotel itselves was a good one, still luxurious as it is from the time period of the sjaah. Outside the hotel, driving from our hotel to the bazaar, it felt like I was in Asia. A lot of grey concrete, huge flat buildings, hardly any trees or bushes. Compared with the very old cars and busses, a lot of pollution, I felt blessed to see something completely different than our culture and was enjoying it. I almost felt that excited as the moment that I drove in my taxi from the airport of Bangkok into town. A culture so far from ours....

The people of Iran are extremely friendly by the way. They are very helpfull (to strangers) in every way and were so grateful for our service on board. I even got a letter of compliments from a customer as he told me I absolutely made his day with my excellent service. While talking about that with him, his neighbour from the other side of the aisle, turned to him, and said that she was absolutely not satisfied with my service. Huh? Funny... She could have told me straight. So I apologized for that, told her that that was absolutely not my intention and asked what went wrong (as I had no clue at all). But she didn't want to talk about it, 'forget it', she said the whole time. Later I tried again, still no reaction, so than I do forget it. If you have a complaint, fine, but at least tell me what it is about. If not, I don't care.

Although I had a good time in Teheran, I'm glad to be back in Holland. I had 2 bad nights of sleep over there, simply because of the height of Teheran. Our hotel is situated at about 1500 m,which means very dry air. About every hour I woke up because I was soooo thirsty! During daytime I drank about 3 liters of water, and then I'm not even talking about all the tea that I drank. The skin of my hand was constantly dried out as well, besides all the handcreme that I was using the whole day. Next to that small headaches and red eyes.

Well, I'll leave you with this huge update. I have the feeling it is too long and boring, but hope anyway that you'll enjoy it....