Cinema, mosque and bazaar in Tehran

The plan for today was quite straightforward: mosque, cinema museum and laundry. It turned out to be more than that :-)

We started day two in Tehran with a visit to the northernmost prt of town (even closer to Mount Tochal). The fact that it’s up on the hillside already makes it a more upmarket part of Tehran. Many embassies are also located here.

We decided to make our first visit to a mosque 🕌 While we stood outside, looking quite uncertain whether our dress code was good enough a and where to enter and all that, we were approached by a friendly gentleman who saw we were lost and explained to us how to proceed (where to get a loaner-chador for Anna, where to place our shoes, where the entrance is for males/females, etc.). He explained that he ran a carpet shop in the nearby bazaar and that he has many Austrian and German friends (and buyers) due to the fact that their embassies are close by. We were impressed that he knew the former (deceased) Austrian President and head of the chamber of commerce. Well, he invited us to come by which we said we would after our visit to the cinema museum...

Iran (and Tehran in particular) was an early leader in cinematography and there were hundreds of cinemas in Tehran before the Islamic revolution. (Now, there are still many cinemas, but the selection of films is much more limited, reducing the number of cinemas as a result).

After the museum, we went back to the bazaar, looking for our new friend. We asked someone for directions. It turned out, that someone was his son, and he took us to the carpet shop. :-) We then spent two hours learning all about his story as a carpet seller (he’s been doing it for 30 years) and how he came to have so many connections to Germany. Mahmud, the father, showed us pictures of himself with the head of the Austrian chamber of commerce, taken when they visited Iran some 15 years ago. We learnt a lot about carpet manufacturing and how he buys his carpets. (In case you’re wondering: yes, we did buy some quite cool carpets in the end :-)).

It was 5pm when we returned to the hostel. After laundry, we went out to a great restaurant/Cafe which was recommended to us. Great tasting, open-air dinner for two in a picturesque city garden for about 7 EUR - we loved it :-) Interesting side note: the waitress was much more comfortable speaking French with us than English. A nice reminder of where we started or trip 6 months ago :-) 🇫🇷Read more