Arriving in Tehran

We landed at the new international airport in Tehran, the excitement is building. The first line you get to is the ‘Passport Verification line. There are two separate lines, one for Iranians and one for Foreigners. I took my place in line with my 3 year old daughter. It’s our turn…my daughter is very cute and said ’salaam’ to the passport inspector (a lady). The passport inpector was laughing it up and talking to her, then just stamped our passports without incident. There were a couple other americans in line behind me and they were finger printed (which, by the way, the US also does to Iranians who visit the states).

Next we are off to get our luggage. The luggage carosoul was pure chaos as 3 flights landed at about the same time, this all at around 3am Tehran time. There were thousands of people there along with all of their families welcoming them. We have to get three carts to hold all of our luggage. The next line is the luggage scanner. Here is where I had a slight issue. The security guy asked me if I had anything to ‘declare’. I said “no”. He retorted “you don’t have anything to declare!?”. I said “no” again and asked what things I need to declare. Luckily my brother-in-law was behind me and stepped in and cleared up the situation. All good, we’re through.

Now we need a taxi van. My brother-in-law finds the dispatcher and hooks us up with a van. His cart was lighter than mine so we sort of lost him in the crowd on the way out the door. I was ambushed with taxi drivers all pulling me in different directions telling me to take their cab, my farsi is limited so I couldn’t fight them off. Luckily, my lovely wife takes control of the situation and tells the taxi drivers in farsi that we are already taken care of. Thanks to my wife and her brother the arrival went very smooth.

The taxi ride. The cab driver had major B.O., I had a little trouble breathing, but survived. So the roads in Iran have lanes separated by lines, but who needs the lines cuz no one pays attention to lanes. We were flying down the highway, the cab driver flashing his brights at everyone so he could get by. We were going between 80-90 mph down the road passing cars by inches, it was insane. Apparently red lights don’t mean the same thing as they do in the states, at least not to this guy, but we made it to our hotel in one piece. The hotel was a decent hotel in South Tehran. The bathrooms have in-floor toilets…hmmm that is going to make things a little difficult.

This entry was posted on 26. March 2008 at 10:27 and is filed under Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.