{"id":3813,"date":"2022-07-08T18:01:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/?p=3813"},"modified":"2022-07-08T20:30:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T18:30:07","slug":"31-05-2022-of-rip-offs-nice-gestures-and-luxury-buses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/2022\/07\/31-05-2022-of-rip-offs-nice-gestures-and-luxury-buses\/","title":{"rendered":"31.05.2022 – Of rip-offs, nice gestures and luxury buses"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While we were still sitting quite relaxed at breakfast that morning, an employee of the car rental company already appeared over punctually to pick up the car. Since Mel could not leave smoking in the car, we still had to pay 2 EUR for cleaning. A look at the km reading told us that we had driven 4,086km in 9 days. After returning our spotless white Samand, we wanted to relax and enjoy our breakfast. But we were “rudely” interrupted – an employee of the hostel asked all women to put their headscarves back on because of the video surveillance. Gone was it with “relaxed enjoy”.<\/p>\n\n

We talked with some other tourists, who were also gradually annoyed by the rather strict rules. The cameras were the most annoying. Even the speed cameras on the highways also filmed the wearing or not wearing of the headscarf. After we were horrified to find out that all bus tickets to Kerman (our next planned stop) were sold out for that day, we wrote to Pegah. Pegah is a young lady who among other things offers tours for tourists – our contact should become closer and closer in the next days. She immediately took care of the tickets.<\/p>\n\n

Small disadvantage: we had to pick them up promptly, i.e. immediately, in person at the bus station. So we walked to the next metro station and wanted to buy there, as honest people, tickets for the metro. Due to communication problems, an employee simply waved us through the gates at the entrance and so we rode patiently without tickets. Arriving at the bus station, a short relief arose in us, because English was spoken here. At first we were told that all tickets were sold out and nobody knew anything about a reservation. When we already wanted to leave disappointed, suddenly two seats in the bus were free or reserved again. With the tickets in hand (about 11 EUR), we took the metro back towards the city center. Andreas had a nice conversation with a local, who would have liked to get a 1-euro coin, but unfortunately we both had none.<\/p>\n\n

Actually, we wanted to continue our exploration tour with metro line 2. After all, there were maps of the three existing lines in the metro station. However, the lines 2 and 3 seemed to be still in planning and so we explored Isfahan further on foot. In the pedestrian zone, money changers were already waiting everywhere, who were also staring expectantly at the boards in front of the exchange offices with the new rates. In the crowds, we spotted a caf\u00e9. It was time for a break with cucumber juice and mango juice.<\/p>\n\n

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After our break, we first went to Naqsh-e-Jah\u0101n Square and visited the Imam Mosque. We met the German speaking carpet dealer from the night before again. He wanted to invite us for tea again. But we decided to look at the mosque first. As usual, we paid 1 million rial entrance fee per person and this time Melanie was allowed to visit the mosque without traditional garb. When leaving the mosque, we were approached by another German-speaking carpet dealer who also wanted to invite us for a tea. Slowly it became too much for us, so: nothing like away, because we had absolutely no intentions to buy a carpet.<\/p>\n\n

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So our way led us to the next stop: the bazaar. There it happened – we let ourselves be dragged into a store after all. In this small store, pictures on the walls testified to the countless, prominent guests: Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, countless statesmen, actors, etc.. We were still allowed to watch the production of carpets from natural dyes and stamps, an interesting technique. After we didn’t buy anything, the Iranian took us to another store of a family member. Melanie was allowed to have her fingernails decorated. Incredible how only with a brush filigree lines were drawn and on one nail two men’s faces and on the other nail a woman’s face was created. The “paintings” told a love story: a young man fell in love with a young lady, but their love was forbidden. 40 years later, the now old man remembered his first love – which had never aged in his mind.<\/p>\n\n

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We were so excited that we still looked at the treasures of the store and bought a souvenir without thinking much about it. When we wanted to pay, the shock occurred. We had bought the most expensive souvenir of all our vacations. 55 euros, or 17.6Mio Rial, for a bottle of camel bone. So many vacations and never fell for rip-offs and now it had happened.<\/p>\n\n

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Still in shock, we continued to Imam Square, which was rather disappointing. Mel’s plan was to take the bus to the various bridges. Our first problem was to figure out which bus went straight to the bridges. The next problem, was to pay the ticket. Fortunately, there was a young student at the bus stop who showed us the right bus and paid for our tickets. To ride the bus, you needed a special electronic credit card, wherever it was available for purchase.<\/p>\n\n

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From Khajoo Bridge we walked through a park to Si-o-se Pol Bridge. On the way we were asked by several locals as usual: Where are you from, are you married, do you have children? We were lucky because the river was not dry for the first time in years. So the bridges looked even more beautiful and somehow elegant.<\/p>\n\n

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Just now we were sitting comfortably with an ice cream and a monster slush, when we noticed that the time had flown by and we were now a bit pressed for time. On foot we quickly went to a snack bar. For the sake of simplicity, we ordered kebabs, which we gobbled down in a hurry. We quickly picked up our luggage at the hostel and decided to order a Snapp to have a chance to reach our bus on time. We made it – we arrived on time at the bus station. However, the display boards were not very helpful for us to find the departure bus platform. A nice older Iranian, who works at the bus station and had learned English himself, helped us and we had a really nice conversation with him.<\/p>\n\n

Our VIP bus from Royal Bus was equipped with comfortable reclining seats and even screens. While Melanie quickly lay snoring next to Andreas, Andreas didn’t sleep a wink that night.<\/p>\n\n

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While we were still sitting quite relaxed at breakfast that morning, an employee of the car rental company already appeared over punctually to pick up the car. Since Mel could not leave smoking in the car, we still had to pay 2 EUR for cleaning. A look at the km reading told us that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[486,732,2],"tags":[668,664,667],"class_list":["post-3813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asien","category-iran","category-reisen","tag-imam-moschee","tag-isfahan","tag-naqsch-e-dschahan-platz","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4121,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions\/4121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanditravel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}