From Hospital to Capital city

We went to Masoud's to have some coffee and we talked a bit. He also amazed us playing on dulcimer. We were still thinking of taking a night bus to Teheran when out host suggested we go with him in the morning. So we agreed on going with him.

I went to sleep but didn't enjoy it for long. A loud scream woke me up. I got up really scared and it turned out that our host had something that looked like epilepsy attack. When he finally seemed ok, he couldn't remember us.

We packed our bags instantly and decided to take him to a hospital.

That night we learned a lot about the Iranian hospitals. Imagine our shock when we entered through the smoke of cigarettes.

Tony talked to the staff about Masoud's situation and we just sat nearby.

The room where they put patients was quite big, the beds were separated by curtains. I personally don't like hospitals and this one was no exception. Seeing people after accidents, blood all over them, may be depressing. And two other people died that night and their families cried very loud to express their loss.

When we sat there, a policeman came and asked us if we were married. We didn't understand what he was saying but we had to show him our passports.

When the policeman was told we brought a sick man to the hospital, he left us alone.
We were there for three or four hours. After that the doctors decided that our host was ok and could go home. We wanted to leave him home and continue to Teheran but he insisted on going with us. In the end Tony was driving and we got on the highway leading to the capital.

It took us longer than we thought because of police control on the way. First, there was a problem with a light. Then, the problem was that Tony was driving (because he didn't have international driving licence) and it was not important that the person who in police's opinion could drive had just spent three hours in a hospital bed... Finally, they stopped us, checked our passports and asked me about my father or brother. When I told them that my family is in Poland, they were very surprised but finally let us go.

Then we made a safety stop to sleep a bit and continued to Teheran, where we've already arranged another CS meeting.

Kandovan

On our third day in Iran we visited the village of Kandovan. We went with our friends from couchsurfing by two cars. Our driver was Masoud. The funny thing is, the route was about 45 km but we stopped two or three times to eat or drink something :) When we reached our destination, we met Babak and his friend.

Kandovan is very similar to Cappadocia but still totally inhabited. The people live there in traditional way, they have mules, hens and sell what they make on their own - dried herbs, fruit etc. When you stand in front of the front door of one household, you also stand on a roof of the house below you.

We climbed the hill, got to see some interiors, children hiding from strangers, older people doing the usual things. It's really hard to say how big those houses actually are, I guess they have much more space than they look like. After all, when you're a visitor, you only see what they want you to see.

After seeing the cave houses we went to a market place where people were selling everything they made - herbs, fruit and delicious jelly-like flat things. I don't know how they call it but I think they're quite popular in Iran because later in Teheran a woman was selling it on subway. I liked it because it was sweet but also a bit sour. We also bought some mint tea.

Tony and Martin disappeared for a while and came back with beautiful shots of the whole village:

 

On the way back we saw an abandoned village in the same fashion as Kandovan. The difference was that you couldn't tell it was a village by just looking from the road. It looked like a regular hill. But when we came closer we could see houses dug in the ground and went inside.

We came back to Tabriz in the late afternoon and wanted to get the bus to Teheran but our driver Masoud invited us for coffee and accepting that invitation was the beginning of a series of unexpected events.