Tabriz - and we discover amazing Iranian hospitality and... Persian carpets... :-)

the first thing we saw at the station in Tabriz after getting off our train was a huge picture of Imam Khomeini... well, welcome to Iran!! Within next days I'll find out that Imam Khomeini is omnipresent.. Main streets and squares of Iranian cities have his name, his pictures are in all hotels, many shops and other buildings and moreover we see Khomeini every time we have to pay, as his face is also on all bank-notes (yeah! each face-value..)...



In front of the station there were already taxi drivers waiting for us. We shared one with an Australian guy that joined us in the train in Van. After 3 days of the trip my only dream was a shower! after finding a hotel we took a very quick one, as we wanted to start visiting the city asap.

I cannot describe what was going on when we went out of the hotel - EVERYBODY was staring at us!!! It's really incredible and impossible to explain it to you. It's maybe as in an European city an ET, or Pope, or Madonna would walk on the streets. It's totally incredible and weird for us and it's quite difficult to get used to it. And people's reactions are very different. Some of them just stare at us, some of them smile to us, some laugh, and those more courageous come and talk to us (hello, where are you come from, welcome to Iran, what do you think about Iran etc). anyway NOBODY stays indifferent. The most absurd situation was when a little child stopped to cry, because it saw us :-).

Anyway the first day we were heading to the Tourism Office, but after about 5 minuts of walk, a mother with two daughters came to us and invited us for a dinner. Just like that!! Quite unususal in Europe!! So we decided to accept the invitation and taste typical Iranian dinner. It turned out that the only person speaking English was a 12 years old girl, but her English was amazingly good! In terms of accent, grammar and vocabulary! As far she was the best English speaker we met in Iran. The family was incredibly hospitable! They asked us at least five times if we wanted to sleep in their place. As Asia said if we would have asked them to give us their TV, they would give it and would be happy to do so... :-) Unfortunately for me the mother cooked a sheep.. And I didn't eat any red meat for more than 10 years... but I just couldn't refuse eating this dinner - I hope that at least the sheep was killed in humanitarian conditions...

The second day we found out that it's impossible to plan anything in Iran, as life here is too unpredictable. Since the first day in Tabriz we spent only 5 minuts in the center and we didn't get to the Tourism Office, we decided to go there straight in the morning. But on the way we decided to visit a Christian church in Tabriz. And it turned out that the person we asked for directions was Mansur Khan - brother of the Nasser Khan who is "the legendary multilingual pillar of the tourist information office" ( lonely planet p.150) about whom we read already on all blogs and forums we were following. We discovered that Nasser loves Polish people and he welcomed us with the most absurd Polish expressions (w morde jeza, jestem zajebisty, wyluzuj). Moreover we had this pleasure and honnour of being invited to his house for a dinner, where we met all his family. Mansur showed us also where we should have an Iranian breakfast - yoghurt with honey and nan (bread) - yuuuuummmyyy!!!!!

This day we also went to Kandovan which is considered being and Iranian Cappadocia, but unlike Cappadocia, people still live there.

Tabriz actually turned out to be not very exciting city. The only interesting things were Blue Mosque and Bazaar. It was actually too interesting and I became mad.. - I spent almost all my money for a small carpet.. the first price was 1000$... I bargained a bit less, but anyway it was still expensive... but beautiful and 100% silk.. well yeah.. I know I've always been a bit too spontaneous... :-)