Tag Archives: resting
wear the spare
When I woke up I was still pretty tired. I went down to the breakfast hall and had two hard-boiled eggs, some cheese and some bread. And a lot of tea. There were no other guests around, but there were party straws: Then I finally went ahead and changed the spare wheel of the Caboose: […]
dudes who beat the crap out of other dudes
One more day to hang out, update the blog, and do laundry (the rope I had brought wasn’t long enough to wash all my clothes in one go). So I mostly stayed around the hotel: One time I went to a small shop and noticed a familiar face: I generally don’t like energy drinks, but […]
waterfall of words
“Do you want to have lunch with a tour group from Australia?” my friend Mastaneh from Mashhad asked me. Of course! I said. It was always good to have lunch, and I needed a break from doing my laundry: I have come to believe that washing machines are among the best inventions of humankind. So […]
weird drinks in the land of no drinks
I woke up, and things were good. It was my day off, the first of three to be exact. The last few walking days had taken their toll on me, and I was happy to just stay in and do some laundry. I had rented the biggest room in the hotel, mainly because it wasn’t […]
blanky and the Safavids
You might have already guessed it. I wasn’t ready to leave this place, yet. Instead I chose to stay another day, curled up on one of the beds outside in the courtyard: Temperatures had dropped, so I was happy I had my sleeping bag and my trusted Blanky with me. I was reading a book […]
likabaows
I woke up with my first blister since Mashhad, and it wasn’t on my foot. It was on my finger. Also, I had a very shitty song stuck in my head. But none of this was bad, because the day was just swell. With Nowruz (the Persian New Year) behind us, the peak tourist season […]
…looking for something
I woke up with a Eurythmics song stuck in my head. There are definitely worse ear worms to have. Sweet Dreams. So I went about doing my laundry, humming: Are Made Of This. Then I went out and marvelled at the empty city, humming: Who Am I. Bought some bread, humming: To Disagree. Got two […]
never been to Tehran
My train arrived in Tehran at about seven: I stumbled out of the station and into the morning… …took a cab to my friend Homa’s house… …and stayed there all day. I had been wanting to go out and look at Tehran. But I was too tired.
the peacock
I was going to leave Isfahan and take a night train to Tehran today. Needed to catch my flight to Taiwan from there. But! There was at least one more mosque on the Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan that I hadn’t seen yet: It was the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, a rare private mosque that a […]
a village called Sin
There was a village outside of Isfahan, a little to the north of the city. The name of the village was Sin. I decided to go there and check out an old mosque that was there. You could not miss the mosque; it had a minaret that was rather tall, rather slender, and rather lopsided: […]
half of the world
Went to an old mosque today, the Atiq Jameh Mosque: It didn’t seem very special at first, as it was basically just a large square with some adjacent arches, similar to many other mosques I had seen before: But the inside was spectacular: These pillars, albeit being made from stone and not from wood, reminded […]
the line between old and new
Today I went to an unimposing door: And behind that door, there was a caretaker: See the mark on his forehead? It usually means that he is a pious man who takes his prayers very seriously, as the Shia use little stones upon which they place their foreheads when they bow down to pray: Anyway, […]
your bleeding heart
Through the help of my friend Mastaneh from Mashhad, I got a tourist guide today: She had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen, and Hanie was her name. We went to the Royal Mosque, walking around it from the side at first, so we could get a feel for its dimensions: Then we went […]
perfect square
I arrived in Isfahan in the early morning: Isfahan. It was a name that I had read about in adventure novels before…Isfahan. The first thing I saw was the train station, though: I got a hotel room in the northern part of town, where I slept for a few hours, then I went out and […]
what to do with a week
I woke up in a room that was clean, quiet, and cozy. And things got even better when I opened the door to the living room and found out that we were about to have breakfast: Staying with my friend Bahman and his wife was the best: It made me wonder why I had not […]
paralyze me
I felt bad today. Tired. Lacking motivation. Disgusted by the roaches. Annoyed by the people who had stolen my money. There was a plan in the making: I was going to go to Taiwan in about one week from now in order to promote my books there. Then I was going to go to Germany […]
like a ghost with the money
I decided to go back to the bazaar: It was located right next to the Holy Shrine, so I hung out there for a while: And I marveled at the fact that a lot of Mashhad’s traffic apparently passed through a maze of tunnels right under the Shrine: Then I went back to the hotel. […]
what is slow?
Another day in the old hotel: I went out for a sandwich once: It was a surprisingly good sandwich. Something was strange, though. There was this slow and lazy atmosphere in the air, something that made me just wanna sleep all day. I wasn’t sure if it was the city, this part of the city, […]
little goat, don’t die
My hotel was supposed to be the oldest in the city, and it showed. But I found it nice to have my own little space anyway. Stayed in all day: Went out after nightfall and walked around the neighborhood. Some of the courtyards looked quite interesting: Then I met up with Shiva and her friends: […]
Between Jaffar And The Throne
One more day. My clothes in the hotel laundry, “The Good Wife” on my phone, the GPS track growing, the photos and videos finding their places on my hard drive: I felt a bit worried: what was walking in Iran going to be like? Would there be more plainclothes policemen to grab me? And where […]