Not Without My Ticket

We went on a horrendous wild goose chase today, one that’s only able to be represented by a surreal short film akin to something like Run Lola Run meets The Amazing Race. Our objective was more or less along the lines of getting out of Iran in any way, shape or form in approximately 1.5 week’s time and before either of our visas run out. Although neither of us are quite as desperate as the characters in Not Without My Daughter, and our enemies are filthy, incompetent airline agents and taxi sharks. ,

The reasons why we’ve had to do this mad dash is because we found out that the same train back to Van has been sold out, and much of the rest of the domestic trains and flights that we need to get around with could only be booked inside Iran. And yesterday being Friday, the Islamic holy day of the week, of course nothing was open or available for any of this to be done. What we didn’t expect was a total administrative nightmare, because there is no such thing as a ‘one-stop travel agency’ in Iran (and Tehran, the capital of all places). For example, domestic flights/trains has to be booked at different offices to international flights/trains, and you can’t book trains and flights at the same place. In some cities, you can only get trains that depart from that city when you get there, and in other cities, you can’t get the train ticket at the train station, you have to go to a travel agent. And in other cities you can’t go to a travel agent to get the train ticket, you have to go to the train station. And the train station can be so tiny that its only open an hour before the train departure. Intercity buses are slightly different however, because its semi-privately run, and there are a thousand different ways you can get them, and there are a thousand different people that will try and sell a bus ticket to you. And of course everything had to be paid in cash, and you can’t get cash just anywhere, you have to go across town to a specific bank and then come back. So we tried booking online, and guess what? Finding an internet café proved to be the biggest nightmare of all. Its not that they don’t exist, its just that no one knows how to explain to us exactly how to find one. And lets not bring up the airline that won’t refund our ticket even though it said on the ticket that the only place we can get refund is the HQ in Tehran. RRRRRHHHHHHAAAAAAAA!!!!

At the end of the day however, I did manage to figure out why I come across like an enraged energiser bunny all the time: I spend 30% of my life working, another 30% sleeping, and another 30% wriggling my way through incompetent bureaucratic set ups, and that is why I need to live to the max at 120%.