We were still in the middle of preparations for the next vacation on 20.05.2022 – a ride to the Berlin airport had only recently been found and our backpacks were not yet completely packed. But one highlight was still to come on the same day, at least for Andreas: together with his sister, brother-in-law and nephew, a visit to the Rammstein concert in Leipzig was still on the agenda. For 2 years, everyone was waiting for this concert, which had already been postponed twice because of Corona – actually, this concert should have already taken place in 2020. Since it was also very warm on this Friday, all had to drink properly and supply themselves abundantly, various liquids. So we enjoyed, with well over 40,000 others present and always well supplied with drinks, the fantastic concert, which for the first time in the history of the band had to be briefly interrupted for 30min because of a strong thunderstorm.
21.05.2022 – A trip with obstacles
The next day, Andreas had slight problems “getting going”. Various drinks had brought his mood to the peak the night before and now he had to pay tribute to these “escapades”. Just in time he managed to pack his bag and we both had actually managed to organize a new ride, after our first ride had cancelled at short notice the night before. Unfortunately, we had to take the bus to the pickup location on the outskirts of Leipzig, which actually cost us a whole hour.
During our drive to Berlin we got into conversation with our driver. Funnily enough, he was originally from Iran and so we still exchanged our phone numbers, as he had offered to help us in case of problems.
In Berlin, we quickly realized that we had made the right decision. Due to the DFB Cup final taking place on the same day, the trains from Leipzig in particular were not only extremely expensive, there was also absolute chaos (several times we had to change the tracks at Berlin Hauptbahnhof running to catch a train to the airport in time in the end) and many trains were cancelled. While we were at the airport having a last beer (yes, by this time Andreas was tasting it again) we met several people who had missed their flights due to the train chaos.
The flights with Turkish Airlines were relatively short this time, the food as usual good. A premiere for both of us were the seats in the middle of the emergency exit, the conditions of which we had to get used to. Unfortunately, Andreas had a very “special” seat neighbor who said he had paid for one and a half seats.
22.05.2022 – Arrival and first impressions
Shortly after 6am we landed in Tehran the next morning. After our visa application efforts had already been very special – our applications were rejected 2 times and approved only after switching on an agency at the 3rd attempt, with identical data – it went on blithely. First, we stood in line at the immigration desk for about three quarters of an hour, only to be turned away. First we had to go to an office to pay for the visa and to prove that we both had a health insurance that explicitly covers Iran (the statement “worldwide” does not count for the Iranian authorities). However, in said office all processes went quite fast and so we were soon able to enter the country and pick up our luggage – the last two bags on the baggage carousel. Unfortunately, our attempt to smuggle our luggage past the security people failed and so we had to go for a short “screening” after all.
Our attempt to buy a SIM card failed at first, because the system of the seller had crashed and so we killed some time. Our stress level increased a little bit, because we were permanently approached by hundreds of dubious characters, if we didn’t want to exchange money with them. The currency in Iran, exchange rates, prices and dealing with the locals with the currency should still confuse us the next few days permanently something. The official currency is the Iranian Rial, but all locals talk about Toman, zeros are omitted, but when converting a zero must be added … Confused? Here is an example: When refueling, the liter of gasoline costs 3,000 Toman, but because there are too many zeros, the gas station attendant tells us that the liter costs 3 Toman. But you pay in Rial, so add another 0 and you are on the right track. Still confused? Don’t worry, we felt the same way! (Resolution: 1 liter of gasoline = 3,000 Toman = 30,000 Rial = approx. 10 Euro cents).
For the first part of our trip we had planned a road trip with a rental car. Sina (a man and Andreas always called him Anis by mistake) was supposed to deliver the car to the airport for us, since we didn’t feel like driving ourselves in Tehran. In fact, he appeared already half an hour before the actual appointment and invited us to a café for a few drinks. Shortly before, we had managed to buy a SIM card after the customer in front of us had bought 20 SIM cards with 20 different passports. The handover of our Iranian high-tech vehicle (a Samand LX) went smoothly and so we started our tour at 09:30.
Around 3pm (after about 300km) we arrived at our first destination, the Ali Sadr Cave. In between we stopped only briefly for the purchase of drinks and a few cookies and a small “emergency stop”. Our vehicle showed a transmission warning after the first 100km. So we stopped and contacted the landlord – whose statement: “Oh. That’s just a light shining. Just keep driving!”. Through a tollbooth, where you could only pay cash, we were simply waved through due to our ignorance of the currency (see above), Persian numbers and language.
The cave was altogether quite interesting and was toured by boat. On a pedal boat were attached with ropes 3 other boats and off we went. We saw interesting rock formation, various stalactites and stalagmites and a large part of the cave we could also explore on foot.
Around 17:30 we started to our first accommodation in the city of Qazvin, another 4 hours and almost 300km later we reached our hostel. On the way there was a half accident with skidding of the Samand because of overtiredness, as both of us permanently fell the eyes. Maybe it had not been the best idea after all: been on the road for about 24 hours by bus, train, carpool and plane and because we were “bored” to drive another 600km by car ourselves.
Our host spoke unfortunately no English – also this circumstance should accompany us the next days – and so we communicated with hands and feet. Also, that we should park our vehicle on a guarded junkyard we understood. Unfortunately, there was nothing more to eat and dead tired we fell 23:30 into bed.
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