Eshfahan
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2006
1
9
27
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Eshfahan, Iran
Thursday, December 14, 2006
i travelled there from tehran with alex, a swede on his way to india. in the evening on our 2nd day in eshfahan, we were accosted by a film director, producer and their translator. they wanted us to be in their tourist promotion clip for eshfahan. well i was gonna head to another place the next day, but what the heck, we agreed.
3 days of free entry to the sights of eshfahan, being fed, accommodation paid, all paled against the glamour of having a camera pointed at us in the freezing weather.
anyway the crew was great and all we had to do was walk around acting like we were taking snaps of the various sites etc.
the director and producer were totally stoked and showered us with gifts (which we had to pay to post home. mum, i'll probably be home by the time the parcel arrives. i sent it by the cheapest possible surface mail) and half a million rials- about $55USD.
but none of that mattered coz
I'M ON TV!!!!!!!!
woo hooo!!!
woo hoo hoooooo hoo!!
so around this time, after a week in iran, i've got some basics in farsi, the national language of iran. the numbers, some pleases, thankyous and how are yous, etc.
i even know how to say i dont speak farsi:
man farsi bastani nistum
i farsi speak not is.
i think i'm quite clever, until after talking to some cute gals, i'm informed by the translator, damoon (who i came to be good friends with), that 'bastani' means ice-cream.
what a knob!!!!
i can confidently reassure u that i can say it properly now.
man farsi ballud nistum.
or more correctly even:
man farsi cham balladum.
i speak a little farsi.
after the first day of filluming, alessandro, an italian i met in tehran on his way to oz, arrived in eshfahan. i spent most of the rest of my time i iran galavanting about with alessandro.
one night in eshfahan, after smoking water pipes for a couple of hours, alex, alessandro and myself were wandering the alleys homewards when we were accocsted by a young iranian fella who insisted on us coming for a joyride in his car. we stopped for ice cream. we sped around the suburbs , ran a few red lights and ended up at a park halfway up mt soffeh on the outskirts of eshfahan. it had snowed that day and we were amazed to see that, well after midnight, there was hundreds of locals hanging around the park doing donuts in their cars, smoking water pipes, sliding around in the snow, drinking, throwing snowballs and generally having a good time.
another preconception about iran blown away
