Hi all,
In Kashan at the moment, a small city half way between Tehran and Esfahan. In the meantime have had lots of fun and frivolity in Tehran and Shemshak, a ski resort just north of Thran on the Alborz mountains.
But first of all Tehran .... probably had my best restaurant experience ever (big call!) whilst on travels here ...not so much for the food, but for the truly personal service ... Ill explain. Finally finding a place in Tehran where we could eat something that wasnt a pizza, kebab or hamburger, I rather confidently decided to order dizi .... a traditional Iranian soup dish. The first thing we noticed that was somewhat out of place was when the waiter put what we thought was an oversized-candle-without-a-wick on the table .... but Iranian restaurants have a habit of putting things in th table to confuse you ... we still dont know exactly what you are supposed to do with your half raw onion that you get in a seperate bowl when you order a meal! Anyway, along came the soup, served in a cast iron oversized mug and an empty bowl ....... I assumed that just getting your spoon and digging in seemed the way to go.
Not long after I took my spoon, one of the waiters came rushing over post haste and started pouring the soupout into the bwol and putting lots of bread into it. What I wasnt to know however, was that this was the first of many steps on how to eat dizi. To cut a long story short, the oversized candle turned out to be a petsel, the waiter had to come screaming over 2 more times to impart enlightenment regarding Persian cuisine and I ended out having to look over my shoulder frequently at the table next to me. The people there were also eating dizi and by ensuring thjat they were always one step in the process ahead of me, I could do monkey-see-monkey-do!
Skiing was fun, even if the getting up at 4am to get the bus wasnt. If sleep was what you wanted once you got on the bus, think again ..... a rather haphazard selection of Iranain Top 40 and Madonna was been played at mind-melting levels! At least th driver didnt ram/get rammed along the way, unlike a hair-raising taxi ride I took here the other day where we rammed two cars and got rammed once! (Though by far most exhillirating, is taking a motorbike taxi across town. Some people queue up a lonmg time and pay good money to go on death-defying rollercoaster rides ... why bother when you can just take a Tehrani motorcycle taxi as I found out!) Most of the slopes proved to challenging for me, as I discovered on the second day skiing when I found myself going flop-flop-flop-flop down the side of a piste, even now my knee still feels a bit sore! We had a lovely dinner there though, as for accomadtion we didnt stay in the resort iutself, but we went to a nearby village. It seems that every night there they have a big communal dinner, there must of been about 200 people in all. They all take it in turns to do the cooking ... we all (well, all the men, the women had to eat in an adjoinging building ..... its amazing to see how some places absolutely everyhting is sexually segregated and others anything goes) ate in this big hall.
Its interstiung to see the differing attitudes regariding the secual segregation laws. On the ski slopes men and women ski freely together, with most women wearing their hejab in the loosest of fashions if at all .... yet in the village 2km up the mountain its barely a face poking out. Tehran is not surprisingly the most liberal of all Iranian cities, so you see women walking the street and not really worrying about how much of themselves is covered up .... but attitudes change vastly outside the big smoke. Some women here ... esp if they know theyll be in a bus or somewhere not so public most of the day dont even bother with the hejab, and when they pass a police officer kinda do vague motions of putting some headware on .... the authorities here seem to quietly accept it as well. For that matter of fact, it seems quite a significan number if not a majority of Iranians despise those in power ..... they believe that the revolution has already taken its course and that it is now time to move on. Anyway, I digress.
We got here to Kashan via Qom yesterday, went to the bazaar this morning and managed to find a way up to the roof of the bazaar for some splendid views of the city. Last night had dinner at this place whuch, among other things, served up a dish called "Distinct Pizza of Poof" ... I just had to get that! Off to Esfahan tomorrow, maybe we need to go via the now infamous Natanz as buses here seem a bit irregular here.
Not long till Oz
James
