. After Teheran we headed to northern Iran: Zanjan, famous for its knives and archeological sites, and Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan: the dominant ethnic group is Azeri, they speak a Turkish language, a bit different from the "Stambuli Turkish" (Turkish from Istanbul) but close enough. Anyway I don’t understand anything…
We are getting tired of wearing something on the head all the time, even in cafes, in the bus and when we want to go from our bedroom in the hotel to the bathroom… But Iranians are very very nice. We met friends of friends of friends, they took very good care of us, and when we were lost somewhere we always found someone to help us. Yesterday for example, we were at the bus station trying to find a bus to go to Sanadaj at night. The guy wanted us to leave in the morning and did not want to understand we needed to leave at night (despite my nice picture of a bus under a moon…) so an old man called one of his English-speaking friends on the phone and helped us to get tickets (of course the night bus did exist!). Then he said he was calling "Madam taxi", so we thought about a taxi for women (yes, it exists in Iran), but it was actually his wife, he wanted us to meet her and help her practice her English. The guy who helped for the translation was there also, a young professor of medicine in the university, who was worried about his visa to France because his paper was accepted for an international conference on reproductive medicine in Paris in November… We were happy to meet all these nice and interesting people, but felt they were toooo caring and intrusive, because we had been almost kidnapped by them, so we finally declined the ice-cream, and went back to the hotel.
Besides all these encounters, we also visit lots of places. Soltanye, the ancient capital of Moghol empire – where Oleijitu wanted to build a mausoleum for Ali (number 2 of Muslim Holy family) but eventually kept it for himself. Takht e Soleyman, where Zoroastrians worshipped the eternal fire around a volcanic lake of toxic water. The Blue Mosque of Tabriz that was destroyed by an earthquake in the 18th century and is miraculously recovering its ancient splendor. Kandovan, a village with funny troglodyte barns and wonderful honey…
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