We took the bus from Maku together with Pepe and Laos. This is the view from the back of a cheap Iranian bus:
Tabriz is a city with a population of 1.4 million, with a weather cooler than other parts of Iran. No subway, only buses and taxis. We stayed 4 days and we loved it a lot.
First day we chilled with the Czech guys, discovered the downtown part, the bazaar, had tea with the locals in a café where Judit was the only girl among ~100 guys :) And we had a shisha (waterpipe). Fun fact: 2 days after Judit smoked the shisha with us here, the government forbade smoking shisha for women in whole Iran. Coincidence? :)
Second day we went to Kandovan, which is something like Cappadocia in Turkey, an underground village carved in rocks. The difference is that here the rock-houses are still inhabited. Most people live of tourism, selling traditional stuff etc. Very interesting place but too hot.
A surprising thing happened in Kandovan: the four of us (with the Czech guys) were sitting at a "table" (not really a table as Iranians eat on the floor) of an open restaurant, when a group of Iranian girls appeared who were quite open compared to the norm in Iran (women must not communicate with men etc.), asking stuff, smiling at us, taking photos with us... All the people sitting around us were staring (anyway, everyone stares at us by default, because there are hardly any tourists in Iran), it was hard to figure what to think of the situation. Of course it was a plasure for us guys to have nice girls making moves on us but at the same time we were the main characters of some very immoral right in the middle of the restaurant. Anyway, photo:
The third day the Czech guys left and we lived a hedonist life, we slept and ate a lot. In the evening we went to park El-goli which is a main gathering point for the locals at the outskirts of the city. The main thing about it is being a nice dark romantic place away from attention so people can hide from the strict Iranian laws, men can meet women, families can gather etc. Also there is a fun park with an entrance fee of about $0.50. We rode a rollercoaster and the big wheel. It was the first time for both of us on a big wheel, it was fun :)
Then it was late night, we walked around in the park. Lots of families having picnic in the park waved to us, we even sat down with a family:
Unfortunately they didn't speak a word in English so we only stayed like 10 minutes because we ran out of subjects, but their hospitality made as feel very good.
After some more walking in the park we sat down in a dark place to have some sunflower seeds and a little break from all the people coming to us. After a while all the staring and hello-hellos are a bit annoying.
We failed. Aida found us in the dark, a 22 year old, very nice, married girl, who was just taking a walk with her family (parents+sister) in the park. She spoke quite a good English, had lots of questions about stuff, we liked her a lot. We asked them if they knew how to get back downtown at this late our if not by a cab, which is too expensive. They told us not to be afraid, put us in their car and took us home to the hotel :) We arranged to meet Aida and her sister Ailar (20) the next day to show us around and stuff.
And so it happened. The girls were über-cool, they drove us around the whole day, we visited El-goli park again in sunlight, had breakfast there, rode bicycles, played volleyball etc :)
In the afternoon they took us home for lunch, we had some great meal which made us sick and had diarrhea and vomited and I got fever and we couldn't go to Tehran even though we had the tickets already which was really tasty, even though it contained something new for our stomachs so we had to lean on the hospitality of Aida and her family for the night and till the next evening when my fever went down and we could leave to Tehran. Apart from this inconvenient episode we had a very happy time in Tabriz, for which we are very thankful to Aida and her family for inviting us over and also for telling us so much about politics, situation of women etc., which we'll write about in a different article. If they wouldn't have found us we couldn't see half of Tabriz :) So thanks Aida, Ailar, mama and papa :)
This is how sugar cubes are in Iran:
