Monthly Archives: June 2018

allowed to ride

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Again, the highway: One thing that is remarkable about the coastal areas here is that women are apparently allowed to ride bicycles by themselves: From what I understand this is forbidden in most other parts of the country, where women must always have a male companion present when they’re riding a bike. Why, though? Either […]


not living up to it

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Walking along the highway, and never being able to leave it, and having the earplugs block everything out and making the world sound as if I was underwater, had left me with a strange sense of detachment. It felt as though I was driving a car through this part of Iran, only very very slow. […]


sad plush toys

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Stayed in another motel. It had a very quiet, empty, almost post-Soviet atmosphere to it: I liked it. There was a photo at the reception desk that showed a group of French people: Were they famous? I didn’t know. What followed was another day on the highway. Again there were people selling clothes: And again […]


dead people

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Leaving Fereydunkenar meant trading the beach for the road. It meant four days of fast walking, most of it done exclusively on a highway. But one thing it also meant was a chance to take my two new stools out for a walk: And they turned out to be awesome. I tried to avoid the […]


earplugs

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My last day in Fereydunkenar. I had finished my work and sent everything to the publishers. I used a hotspot I had set up on my cellphone to do this, because local Wifi connections were almost always terrible in Iran. The LTE coverage wasn’t so bad though. When I was done, I went into the […]


The Pinkest Way

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So I would basically just sit there, drink tea, and type stuff into the computer. One of the numerous things I wanted to take care of was a problem that had arisen over on my YouTube channel. Long story short: I had ended up sending a box of cookies to YouTube because I wanted them […]


dangerous waves

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I was still sad about what had happened to the swing on the beach. But when I went there today, I found out that it had merely been moved to a better place (along with the slide): There were efforts to move the bench as well, however, it had turned out to be a bit […]


work-life balance

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I still had a lot of stuff to do. I needed to come up with a bunch of captions for my photo book: But. But. But there was also the beach. And there was the sea. There was the sound and the smell of water. I went in and took a selfie with the waves: […]


who knocked over the goddamned swing?

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There was a little playground on the beach. Or rather: it was just a swing and a slide. I didn’t care about the slide, because I was too big for it. But I liked the swing. Generally I enjoy sitting on swings, and I like using their frames to stretch my back. Strangely enough, someone […]


a motel on Chamran street

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The motel was located right next to the beach. And I mean literally right next to it. It was even closer to the Caspian Sea than the sanatorium in Kaji-Say had been to lake Issyk-kul one year earlier. When I wanted to go down to the beach, I would step out of my room and […]


hype

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Babolsar was one of the prime tourist destinations in this part of the country. So it was crowded. In fact it swarmed with people, and I was told that many of them were from the area of Mashhad, where I had been just a few months earlier. It felt only logical that people from a […]


why you should have long hair

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First things first: having long hair sucks, and it sucks hard. Depending on your hair’s texture, you have to use a conditioner when you shower, and you have to brush after. It takes ages for your hair to dry, too. And it gets everywhere. It’s really just annoying. But, if you have long hair, and […]


Ebrahim’s Angels

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There was a shrine right next to where I was staying: Imamzadeh Ebrahim. Word had it that he was a brother of Imam Reza, the gentleman to whom the huge shrine in Mashhad was dedicated. I decided to go check it out. It was a medium-sized shrine: Behind it (in fact, all around it) was […]


bamboo torture

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Turns out Juybar, this inconspicuous little town between the mountains and the Caspian Sea, is the center of Iranian wrestling. And since Iran as a nation is pretty good at wrestling, Juybar is arguably also one of the main centers of wrestling in the world. There are monuments and posters dedicated to wrestling all over […]


let’s take a snail

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When I left my hotel this morning and the owner asked for a photo of us together, I decided to post it along with all other photos I was going to take with people along the way: But first it was just easy walking through the quiet parts of Sari: Here’s selfie number 2 with […]


super healthy cookie

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I remember telling you about the awesome apricots I bought on the way yesterday. But I didn’t show you what they looked like: Or were they peaches? Either way it was: omnomnomnom. Why always apricots, though? Turns out the eternal question of apricots or peaches is actually quite simple: if you have a place to […]


Iranians love chandeliers

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I felt like moving, but just within the city. I didn’t want to leave Sari, and neither did I want to leave my friends. However, I felt like it was time I gave them and me some space and stopped my occupation of their living room. So I packed up the Caboose and stepped out […]


PUNKS not DEAD

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Another slow day. A day of friendly banter, of food and of drink. One thing you realize rather early in Iran is that the people here like to eat rather late. I have had many “lunches” that were at three in the afternoon (or even at four or five), and dinner is often at nine […]


the (not so silent) silent place

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I was going to rest up in Sari for a few days. So today my friends took me to an historical madrasa in a village outside of the city: It was apparently from the Safavid period, which would make it a few hundred years old. Either way I loved it. It was beautiful and quiet: […]