Week 4 – Part 1/1

Days 25-31, 14.2.-20.2.

Not much happened in this week. On Monday (16.2) I went to the train station to search for train departures to Esfahan and Sari and for a possibility to buy tickets directly at the station, which is possible for rides of the same day. As I went off the metro I saw an Iranian ginger and could not let the opportunity of a photo pass. To get home I spent about two hours on the bus although it would have been only a 17km walk. But the traffic of Tehran is just insane.

On Tuesday (17.2) I accompanied Alexander, Anton (another Russian) and Anahit, who met in the Armenian Quarter with a friend of Anahit. The friend made a little tour around, but I didn’t understand nearly anything, since only Russian or Armenian was spoken.

On Thursday (19.2) I decided to go to an advertised music festival with Roman and Zhihui. Its name was Fajr (Northern Lights) Music Festival and took place in the centre. Since Roman didn’t feel well, I met with Zhihui alone. The concert, we didn’t know what it would be like, was at 8.30pm so we went for a kebab before. It was funny and because we laughed a lot everyone looked as us, mostly eating somehow sad themselves.
Then we walked to Vahdat Hall and tried unsuccessful how and where we could get tickets. The only thing we acknowledged was that there would be two concerts: One American Jazz band and an Iranian orchestra playing classical music. We decided to go, when possible, to the classical one.
Some minutes after eight we met some other students from our school and they told us we needn’t pay anything. But we went to the American Jazz band called Animation. Since 1977 it was the first being allowed to play in Iran, of course under the surveillance of Khomeini and Khamenei. However their style of Jazz wasn’t my taste and Zhihui went home after half an hour. We were not the only ones who thought that way, because many others pulled out their smartphone or started chatting, which was in my opinion very disrespectful towards the musicians.
Under applause they made the quite controversial statement, Iran would be the best country in the world. When the frontman said, they surely usually paid way more than local people, we foreigners were the only ones who laughed. But that the possibility of playing in Iran touched the band members deeply, was easy to recognize.
When the concert was over and we discussed it outside, we were quite strictly asked after 10 minutes to leave the ground. Our search for a taxi ended up in a little brawl. One offensive driver considered himself disadvantaged when we chose another one and slapped ours.
On Friday (20.2) I learnt for a little test the next day and only walked to Tochal cabin station to get some fresh air.