Tehran

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Arriving to a cool and quiet Tehran at 05:00 in the morning I first had to play the ‘taxi?, taxi?, taxi?’ before I found my way to the house of my hosts. I dropped my things and started what turned out to be a long day of locating the embassy of Turkmenistan. The address on Google was wrong and turned out to be the Swiss embassy…

After locating it and applying for a transit visa early the following morning I spend the week exploring the city a bit (it’s massive, with 17 million inhabitants), tagging along with my host to English lessons (he’s English and studies Farsi) and meeting a lot of his expat and Iranian friends.

The entrance to the city of Tehran; the 'Azadi' or Freedom tower.
It's an awesome structure to walk around and take pictures of!
At night the view from this penthouse of one of my hosts' friends was better than during the day, because the smog obstructs the view.
Tehran is quite a green city, with parks all over. In the distance the foot of the Alborz mountain range is visible.
These singing fountains have been spiced up a bit.
When we went to play tennis I could wear shorts for once; though women have to keep their Hijab on. Wearing shorts in the street is forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran, just like real beer...