We checked into a room in a dingy budget hotel in the panel-beaters area near Imam Khomeini Square, (as we subsequently found out, every city’s main square and main road and any major landmarks such as airports, hospitals, schools, parks etc are all named after the dictator.. ). At the only bank in the precinct where we can change money, we exchanged just over 3 million Rials each with the equivalent of just over 200 pounds. Shanti balanced the wads of note with both pride and amusement in the photos. 14,000 Rials is worth about a pound at the moment, and while everything is dirt cheap compared to the UK, it’s the thought of spending over 1000 of anything on the smallest thing like an orange or a bottle of water just is a scary mind-blowing concept. And the surreal idea of having 3 million to spend in the next week and a half is just quite an unusual situation, I suppose.
It’s a sunny, beautiful day, a total contrast to rain and snow stricken Turkey. Tehran sits comfortably under the magnificently snow dusted Alborz Mountain range, and today the peaks just glowed astonishingly majestically under the winter sun. Its perfect strolling weather apart from chocking fumes. The streets were busy and crammed with mostly rusty-down-stricken vehicles that would have gone to the waste dump twenty years ago. But the city is fairly modern and commercially quite active, full of busy small family-run style shops with rusty door frames, flashing signs big and small all in Arabic, mostly with young men who are smart-casually dressed and smiling to show content urban lives. I expected to see a little bit more poverty than it had seemed to be presented here, and a bit more of a traditional Old-town look but it was just a stereotypical busy city resembling parts of Delhi, Bangkok or even the old Taipei of my childhood.
We walked towards the University to get to the Art Gallery. Along Ferdosi Square and North-Eastwards the city becomes even more vibrant and glossy, and quite liberal. We walked past a cute little ‘lovers’ park’ on a side street where young couples would sit together with their backs against the street to squeeze in that little bit of privacy forged outside a private home. This seems to be the area where the young and beautiful gather for drinks and chats after lectures. They are all so gorgeous looking here - the young men are pretty well groomed, but quite monotonously dressed (until you get to the art gallery)… many of the girls are in colourful headscarves that would slip half way down their head, skinny jeans and funky sneakers defying the dreary look their more conservative counter parts are encouraged to take. The quite glamorous girls covered their faces in heavy makeup, the eye-liners and mascaras and blotchy lipstick completely covering the presumably young tender skins that lied underneath, and huge combed back fringe (think Crystal of BigBrother04 in Australia…) they resemble Amy Winehouse in a Bridget Bardot outfit… or does Amy Winehouse resemble them?
In the speedy but crowded metro station, heaps of locals voluntarily approach us and help us out, we obviously just looked so helpless with the language barrier. We were absolutely amazed by the amount of curiosity and helpfulness, especially from the women, but also level of English spoken as compared to say Van in Turkey. The best thing about the Tehran metro is that there are women’s only carriages at the front and rare of the train, and not only is it less crowded, its just a fascinating way to see women interact without the presence of men – an entirely female space of community and networks that’s hard to observe elsewhere. We got approached a few times, without men glaring at them the women are more confident and warm. On one occasion when we asked one girl where the best place to eat around the 
area was, the entire carriage ended up giving a range of advice and several different animated conversation ensured about the best place to go, and we ended up with several maps and written instructions to find the best dizi in town. They were also very helpful with our dresscode – one warned shanty that her coat had ‘rode up her pants’ and one other told me that I didn’t have to wear my scarf so tight and so low down my forehead, unless I wanted to be considered a religious zealout… 
In the rush hour the traffic is horrendous but the neon lights come on and the atmosphere is almost festive, people out and about in snack bars or tea houses for a social gossip over a cup of tea and a puff of shisha before they all disappear home for the evening meal. Apart from on and off duty soldiers in uniform everywhere you go, busy corners of traffic cops everywhere, stopping from crossing the road or flagging down a taxi when its perfectly safe to do so but they just want a power trip, reminding me very much of Beijing.
After our evening meal of kebabs and salad, a light Hong Kong martial arts movie played on TV with Persian dubbed over, can you imagine how hilarious it all turns out? I approached reception with a few kong fu punches as a joke. This created much amusement for the boys crowded at reception to watch TV, who decided it was a good idea to prank call us for the rest of the evening. Live and learn…
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