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There was no way around it. I was never going to find an Irish bar in Iran. In fact, I was never going to find an Iranian bar in Iran. With alcohol strictly off the menu, I was having serious doubts about the capacity for 'having fun' in Iran.
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Frustrations and Friendliness in Persia

Conor_purcell
2005-11-18 13:56:53

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something which I had heard about, but not really believed, happened.

"What country you from?"

"Ireland."

"Ireland?............Ireland?............ah, Bobby Sands!"

I knew the answer to give straight away.

"No food!"

Then I tried to change the subject. When travelling, I try to stay away from stuff like this - apart from not knowing a great deal about the man, I try not to capitalise on my 'Irishness' to win friends. For example, if someone is treating me bad because they think I'm English or American, and then change their attitude when they learn the truth, I try to avoid them.

That night, I got my first glimpse into the feelings of Iran's urban youth about the situation in the country. Dictatorship was the most commonly used word, always followed by 'shusshh'. As if I would. The night ended with the customary swapping of e-mail addresses which will never be used. The next morning, I was going to Rasht, to use the town as a base for visitng the mountain village of Masuleh. Only this time I had company - two Germans, considerably older than me, but hopelessy, eh, hopeless in dealing with Iranian taxi drivers. In order to reach Rasht, we had to change at Ardabil, which required a taxi ride from where we were dropped off to the actual bus station.

"It takes 50 minutes," our evil driver told us.

"No it doesn't, on the map it's about 4km away", I answered.

My German companions were amazed that I had answered back. One of them had already reached into his back pocket
to pay the 30,000 Rials the guy was demanding. We arrived at the bus station in under ten minutes, and the guy was still demanding 30,000. I knew to pay no more than 5,000, and kicked up a huge fuss in front of the whole bus station, engaging with English-speaking locals about how Iran's taxi drivers were ...