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Qazvin, Iran
Thursday, Sep 08, 2005

Qazvin, Iran

David Murray
2007-02-21 19:57:18

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We were driven into the centre of the city to the Hotel Iran. We said our goodbyes and watch the family drive away. Once again, Lucy and I were Western Infadels in a land of Muslim Extremists !!! This was ok, as there were quite a few sites that we wanted to see, so we changed and hit the road.

We walked out and found the Jameh Mosque quite quickly. Basically, every city has a Jameh Mosque. It is the name given to the biggest Mosque in each city. It was pretty much what we had seen so far. Mainly blue tiles with a set of twin towers as you entered. The thing is though, in Iran, you are quite free to walk around Mosques unlike other Muslim countries I have been to. We walked on and managed to miss one of the town gates. It looks like a Mosque and it looked closed, so that is why. But we did not miss out on the next gate. The Tehran Gate. It was pretty impressive with tiles all over it. It would have looked good in its day when there were town walls attached to it. Next up were a couple of mausoleums. These are everywhere in this country !!! One shrine we were not able to get into, only to look from the street, but the other one we walked up and went in. First through the praying area and then to see the shrine, which had some historical local guy, which did not mean much to us, but it was covered in mirrors, so we had a bit of a laugh and moved on. We visited a few more mosques before ending up at another gate which had some lions on so it was ok to look at. It was getting late and we were hungry. However, what we have noticed is that there is a certain lack of restaurants around, so we settled for some crappy food, which was hard after what we had had in the previous 24 hours. Once this was done, we went back to the hotel. I went to get the key, and whilst I was doing this, a girl came up and started talking to Lucy. When I came out, she invited us back to her place for fruit and tea. We accepted as we had such a good time previously. On the way to the bus, she mentioned that I was British and she new my name. I was quite alarmed with this as the only way she could have found this out was through the hotel. I asked her if she worked there, but she didn't. I wanted to question her more, but we had to get on a bus. That is when I learnt a new word in Iran

Segregation

What is this

Well, in Iran, there is a bar and the women sit in the last 1/4 of the bus and the men have the rest of it. It was slightly amusing I suppose, but it was the first time we had seen it in this country. We had not caught local buses previous to this. At our stop, we jumped off and went to this girls house. Once in, she took off her top and scarf. She was not attractive. She should have left them on. She still had the price tag attached to her jeans !!! Straight away, we were asked about religion. We told them we were not religious and they bombarded me with questions. I had one for them. If Adam and Eve had two babies, Cain and Able, who did they mate with. Her brother said that they were very intelligent and that they mated with monkeys !!! I asked him if he meant the Darwin theory, but he did not believe in Darwin !!! While this was going on, Lucy was being asked whether she shaved !!! This girl did. We were in a freak shows house. Realising we had made a big mistake, we got up and left. This family were nowhere near as nice as the previous one. We ran. I told Lucy that she new all about us before we had told her anything. Lucy wanted to say something to the hotel, but it would have been pointless, so I will tell you all now. If you are ever in Qazvin, keep away from the Hotel Iran. The staff cannot be trusted