I crossed the border just after Yüksekova, a Turkish city that was about to get destroyed by an earthquake only 4 days after I travelled through it. A white, long-bearded old man with thick, dark eyebrows and a black turban was pictured above the counter. The man in the picture gazed at me with a quizzical look. The officer behind the counter controlled my passport for some minutes. Then he smiled, passed me my passport and said

“Welcome to Iran!”

I passed the counter, walked through the building and went outside. There was no questioning, no luggage searching and no inconveniences. I I was in the islamic republic.

The republic which wants the atomic bomb.
The republic where alcohol is forbidden and parties are illegal.
The republic where peaceful protests are brutally cracked down.

I had 30 days to travel in this country and I was just about to get started. What would you expect behind the borders of such a state, a state that is mostly coined by newspapers and the television rather than from tourists.

Before I came to Iran I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew some important things about that country:

I knew about the situation in Iran ever since the aftermath of the elections in 2009.
I knew that the people suffer from governmental oppresion.
I knew that demonstrations are being brutally repressed.
I knew from other blog entries and other travellers that it is safe to travel there and that the people are smart and hospital.

But beyond this I didn’t know what the people are like. Will I need to be very careful with what I do or what I say? Are the majority of the people tolerant towards the west or foreigners? How will the Iranians react on my presence? What about the police? Will they molest me once they see me? Will hitchhiking work there easily?

These questions and many others were on my mind and I was endlessly curious to find the answers. I found the answers for myself and I hope that you will get a better understanding of the people of Iran after reading on. Because I am finding it difficult to explain Iran in one Blogpost, I will split it in several posts.

Now that I am in India since more than three weeks, I am still thinking about my time in Iran and sometimes, my heart is still there, as I am endlessly thankful for the experiences that I had there. I owe these posts to the many Iranians who invited me to their home, who gave me rides and who welcomed me with a genuine hospitality.

So once there was and once there wasn’t.
Flip a coin and roll a dice.
Throw away your preconceptions and read on.
Because Iran is not like what you would think it is.

Hitchhiking in Iran

“Hello Mister! Wanna change money mister? I give you good rate!” says the 18 year old guy right after the border. “No, thank you, I’m gonna hitchhike!” I said proudly “I don’t need money.” The young man didn’t understand, but he decided to leave me alone. “But you need money in Iran!!!” he shouted after me and I kept on walking.

“Urmia?” “Taxi!” “Urmia!” These were the taxi drivers, I needed to go to Urmia, yes, but I didn’t want to go by taxi. So, I kept on walking towards the main street.

Finally I was there, I arrived at the main street and compared to East-Turkey, this road was much better build, flat and solid. I stood on the street with my thumb up waiting for the next car. And yes!!! The first car stopped, I opened the door and asked: “Urmia?” “Urmia!” The driver replied. Great!
So, I called my host Pooriya:

• Pooriya: “Where are you?”
• Me: “I am driving to Urmia, I just hitched a ride, can you explain the driver where to drop me?”
• Pooriya: “Ok, give the phone to the driver”.

… one minute later …

• Pooriya: “Dude! You’re not in normal guy’s car, you’re in a taxi!”
• Me: “What? But he didn’t tell me anything about that!”

Pooriya bursts out laughing and told me that this is normal in Iran. Normal cars, which have no taxi signs at all can also be taxis. There is a huge taxi culture in Iran. Because there is no such thing as a VAT, anyone who drives a car can just become a taxi.

At first I thought that it will be easy to hitchhike in Iran because I heard of the big hospitality there, but due to the big taxi culture there, most of the cars stop only for you if they are also a taxi.

So, I told the taxi driver with sign language that I had no money at all and that he should drop me at the next junction.

At this junction I met someone doing his military service. He smiled at me and said “Welcome to Iran!”. He spoke perfectly english and asked me if he could help me. I told him that I want to hitchhike to Urmia. He seemed to understand and told me: “No problem! I will stop the cars for you and tell them in Farsi that they should take you to Urmia.” Great!

It didn’t take a minute and I sat in a car with three other people. Now I must be sitting in a normal guys car I thought to myself, but after calling Pooria again, I got to know that I was in a taxi again and he charged me 5$ after arrival.

After that Pooriya also told me that the thumb is a insultive gesture which is equivalent to the middlefinger, which is not the best sign to show to people who should give you a ride.

Lessons learned:

1. Be very sure that the guy you are hitching a ride with is NOT a taxi driver.
2. No more thumbs up in Iran

Now that we can’t use the thumb anymore and every car that stops is a taxi, what to do?

First, go to a good location at the edge of the city where there are no taxis, if need be, with a taxi. The best spots are always the toll stations because there is a lot of traffic, they all drive somewhat the same directions and they need to stop at the counter. Unlike in countries like France or Spain I haven’t been sent away from the toll stations. Nobody really understood why I didn’t take the bus and they actually helped me to get a ride. The police was also there and they were quite nice to me. They smiled at me and wanted to know where I come from, but didn’t ask for my passport, so they were just curious.

Second, don’t use your thumb, instead strech out your arm and start to flutter your hand up and down in order to signal the drivers to slow down and to stop for you. This sign is also used for taxis. After a while, it can become quite exhausting to flutter with your hand up and down and if someone makes a photo of you in an unfavorable moment, it might look like something else but what can you do ;)…

Now that we don’t have those two problems anymore, we can easily hitch a ride. My average waiting time was maybe 25 minutes. Not the best, but absolutely average.

Regarding safety

Unlike other depictions of Iran which come from the news, kidnapping is not a big thing in Iran. Neither are there radical islamists trolling the streets. The most annoying and most dagerous thing in Iran is the traffic. Iran has one of the worlds worst road accidents rates with more than 200,000 reported every year. Nevertheless the Iranians are averagely very good drivers and one has no chance but to surrender to the madness and play the game. Moreover the Roads, especially the highways are big and very well built. Below you can see a random picture of the highway and the traffic in Tehran.

The earthquake of magnitude 7.2 which happened on Sunday, the 23rd of October in the very east turkey close to the Turkish city Van in the afternoon was a devastating blast for the whole region.

With an estimated number of 1000 deaths and 85 confirmed deaths, the city is dramatically destroyed. As it was a Sunday and many people of Van were inside their homes during the earthquake to have lunch with their families.
With Van being one of the poorest of the poor big cities in the Kurdistan region in East Turkey, it makes the brutal catastrophe which is the worst earthquake since 1999 even worse. 

Having lived in Van for a total of 6 days and having travelled in the Kurdistan region for 13 days, I was able to listen and to see the region’s problems. My hitchhiking trips which led me once from Trabzon to Erzurum, Agri and Van and once from Adana to Urfa, Diyarbakir, Tatvan and Van enabled me to encounter many different people in the Kurdistan region and to feel the daily struggle of the Kurds. The ongoing war between the Turkish government and the PKK which now lasts over 30 years  have created an equation between rich and poor, between educated and uneducated from the west to the east which doesn’t exist like that in any country.

During my time in Van I have been hosted by two different hosts.

One of them is Necip, a 45 year old Kurd who became an animal vet and who is also active in a Kurdish human rights organization. I got to know him over Couchsurfing and together with his friend he showed me the major parts of the city and he prepared a splendid breakfast for me each morning. He is divorced from his former wife and has an 8-year old daughter who also lives in Van at his mother’s place. He was the first person in Van with whom I could have a proper conversation in English and spending three days with him meant also getting to know the opinion of an educated Kurd who has always lived in Van and who has experienced the most horrible period of the War against PKK in 1992.

My second hosts have been two women called Ruhan from Trabzon and Marve from Ankara who worked as teacher in Van schools. I got to know them in a shop while asking for the way. Marve teaches in an elementary school and Ruhan teaches in a high school. Both of them talked a very good English and both of them were of Turkish origin. They didn’t choose Van as a city to live, instead they were sent there by the the government to teach at least one year abroad. Together with them we met one of her students in a shop. Ruhan turned to me and said “this is one of my students. I can’t really recall his name, but he is a very good one.” I thought for a second and surprisingly replied “what? He is your student and you don’t know his name?”
“I am sorry, but in one class there are 45 children and I have 11 classes a week and even that changes each month”. Wow, I thought to myself. That means she sees an approximate amount of 400 children each week. There are some families (not all of them[!]) who have 15 children and some of those children don’t even go to school. Walking through the streets made me realize that there are many, many children in the streets of Van. On 6 adults comes one child between 4 and 10 years old. Some of them go around and try to sell tissues or sell cheap cigarettes from Iran in order to earn some few Liras. Some of them just walk through the streets and some of them help their parents with works. Some of the children were forced to come to the bigger cities from the villages because they have been destroyed by the Turkish military. With Marve being an elementary school teacher she told me about the neediness of some of the children. Teachers often serve as a substitute parent as they hug and cling to them during school and when they meet them in the city.

The problem is already getting worse and worse over the years even without the earthquake. Losing home and family is the worst thing that I can imagine could happen to a region which is so troubled with the living conditions which have been already concerning bad.

Turkey serves as a gate between Europe and the middle East. Western cities like Istanbul stand in a stark contrast between the struggles in the East. With the government enjoying a rapid economical growth which has been mainly due to the western cities Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Ankara and Adana, Turkey is pushing towards a big major power in the region between Europe and the middle East. When you go to the west of Turkey as a European, the west seems secular and liberal, even western. Ongoing debates and enthusiasm about joining the EU and making new profits shows the West-Turkish’ aspirations and dreams to strive for wealth and modernity. The east of Turkey however remains poor, religiously conservative and stuck in between a war of the PKK and the government. The problems of the people in the East are in their head everyday, it was in my head everyday. As you walk through the cities which have at least two army stations with wired fences and guarding military along the way, it is hard not to see the brittle and harsh reality of the East. However having lived in west Turkey I was able to enjoy nice parties in the cosmopolitanism of Istanbul, sunny beaches in the beautiful area of Antalya and a paradise resort called Kabak Valley in the south west close to Fethiye. The problems of Turkey in these nice places have not been in my head at all, they were out of my sight and thus out of my mind. Travelling towards Van from Adana however put them in my ind again and made me reconsider wether or not Turkey should join the EU.

I contacted Necip and I was relieved and shocked to get this reply: “We are all fine, but Van is destroyed. I‘m so sorry. We live out and the weather is cold…” I still didn’t hear from Ruhan and Marve. I really hope they are fine.

My deepest condolences to all the families of the wounded and the dead.
I am so sorry.

Whenever I hitchhiked I did it with the aim to get from A to B. This time though, things were supposed to be fundamentally different. This time I wasn’t hitchhiking from A to B, but from A to A and I tried to get as far as possible and to be back within 60 hours! It was a hitchhiking competition consisting of 25 teams with a healthy dose of crazyness and we were about to do a pre-eastern hitchhiking race within two and a half days at the 21st of April 2011 starting from Hamburg.

To win the race, my teammate Lily and me faked a wedding and we pretended to be on honeymoon.
Having just arrived from Barcelona, Spain, I had little ambitions to return to Spain through France, so we decided to go direction Istanbul.

10am, 21st April 2011, Susy’s Show Bar, Hamburg, Germany:

The race starts, each team tries to get as fast as possible to the highways with different strategies.
The wedding dresses were the perfect disguises to get a ride at the Altona parking space. Often we didn’t even have to ask because people were so curious that they even asked themselves where we need to go.
That being said, we were on our way to the highway direction south in no time.

11am, 22nd April 2011, Belgrade, Serbia:
After 25 hours, 8 rides, numerous conversations with drivers and an exciting journey, we arrived in Belgrade with decayed flowers and dirty dresses. Hitchhiking like that didn’t look much like a honeymoon no more, but more like a pimp and his hooker. We took it easy and didn’t hitchhike much further than that and took a stroll in the city.

6pm, 22nd April 2011, another gas station in Belgrade:
Apparantly, 6pm was too late. Hitchhiking late in Serbia was a bitter experience. There was almost no traffic at all! This was the beginning of a long night in the highway streets of serbia. Fortunately all gas-stations on the highway were opened 24h.

1:30am, 23rd April 2011, Novi Sad, Serbia:
Despite of the few traffic that there was, we slowly made it to a gas-station in front of Novi Sad. But there was still just no traffic. We wondered if we were ever able to hitchhike back in time to Hamburg. We needed to arrive at 10pm at this very day. As hours passed by, the chances were getting slimmer and slimmer to make it back to Hamburg in time.

6am, 23rd April 2011, 100km behind Novi Sad, ~20km in front of the Hungarian Border:
We made it one step further, but still almost no traffic.
The sun came out around 6:30am and the traffic increased.
Incredible how relieving it can be to have traffic.

9am, 23rd April 2011, the same spot.
Markus, our rescue angel came by with his transporter and took us till Munich in a smooth direct ride. We were overly excited to be back in good old safe Germany where there is a lot of traffic and where drivers drive as fast as they want.

2pm, 23rd April 2011, gasstation in front of Munich, Germany:

The race wasn’t over yet, if we just found someone who goes very fast to Hamburg we could still make it!
We split each other running from person to person in order to catch a fast ride going to Hamburg.
And hell yeah! We got a ride within 10 minutes! A polish guy who just came from his easter-vacations who drove to Gdansk who took us with 160km/h towards Berlin.

7:30pm, 23rd April, gas-station in front of Berlin:
Still 288 km do drive. There is still hope.
We jumped out and ran towards a young couple that was driving to Rostock.
YES! 18 year old Gina and 23 year old Robert served us with another fast ride direction Hamburg.
Even though Gina was only 18, she drove like a formula 1 racer.
We told them our story and they helped us by quickly passing each gas station at the highway watching for people with fast cars going to Hamburg. First gasstation: there was no fast car going to Hamburg.
Second gasstation: Bingo!

9:00pm, 23rd April 2011, Between Hamburg and Berlin:
A red Audi A5 S-line, Still 200 km to go and a fast driver. This car was god given, it was the ride which drove us directly to the place where we needed to go and it was fast! This car has the 160km/h mark on the 12 o’clock position.

10:35pm, 23rd April 2011, in front of the Haus 73 in Hamburg, Germany:
Even though our driver drove us very fast, the laws of physics couldn’t be broken. We arrived 35 minutes too late… Our team was disqualified.
That being said, it was nevertheless so relieving that Lily and me made it to the venue at all.
20 teams made it back, 5 were still not back. The winner team made it to Valencia and back.
Celebrating with everyone and sharing stories has been great.

We did over 1800 km in 13 and a half hours!
That is the fastest trip from point to point that I have ever done.

The cup goes to the team “King Kong And The White Woman” and will be given to the winner in the next competition (see here).

The race was organized by Tramprennen.org

Tramprennen organizes as well a beneficial hitchhiking race to a far away location each year since 2008 in summer. Sponsors are giving money for each hitchhiked km and this money goes to VivaConAgua, an NGO which is building clean water supplies in third-world countries.