I woke up the next morning startled that I wasn’t on a plane. It was my first morning waking up in Iran and I had my first of many butterbread Sangak and feta cheese breakfasts with sour cherry jam. Delicioso! Or xošmazze — which is not the easiest word to pronounce, but it means “delicious” in Farsi. Sangak is a whole wheat sourdough flatbread, considered to be Iran’s national bread, that is traditionally baked on a bed of hot stones in an oven. My pops and I took a trip to Tajrish bazaar one day and got ourselves some freshly made Sangak. Here’s a short video I took that morning:

In addition to my freshly made breakfast, I had piping hot cups of Peet’s coffee, prepared in a French press that I had brought with me. One word about coffee in Iran: Nescafe. That’s all they drink is instant coffee. Coming from San Francisco, I’m spoiled of course by high end artisanal roasters — namely, Blue Bottle and Philz —  but my coffee snobbery was well-appreciated in Iran. My aunt’s guests and my cousins loved the fresh-brewed coffee I made for them, and for many it was the first time they’ve ever had anything other than Nescafe.

After I shook off that morning’s jetlag with my caffeine fix, we walked around Vanak Square for a while, but I didn’t have much time to explore Tehran town. My dad told me that afternoon to pack a bag — we were taking a late flight to go to Shiraz that same day.

The cab ride to Mehrabad airport was interesting, for lack of a better word. First of all, there was traffic up the yin-yang and everyone drives like a maniac. The lack of laws governing driving within the country is crazy; Iranian drivers ignore signs, cross lanes without warning, and generally have a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to traffic lights. Deaths caused by car accidents are cited as the primary cause of unnatural deaths in Iran. I asked the cab driver how in the world can he navigate daily in this craziness he put it this way: “There’s a musical language among drivers — everyone drives the same crazy way, so we understand each other’s crazy movements.” Of course, that’s my translation of what he said — in Farsi, it sounded so much more poetic. I’ll get to the translation problems in a later post. For now, here’s a clip from the cab ride:

Once we arrived at the airport, I had to go through a security checkpoint — in a separate ‘women only’ line. I didn’t have to remove my shoes or headscarf, they just gave me a pat down and let me keep my bottled water. All in all, it was pretty chill. However, it was here at Mehrabad airport that I first discovered the Persian public toilet problem:

Not cool.

I walked into the Mehrabad airport bathroom stall and saw the above. Not one person had informed me of this — that the toilet was going to be a freakin hole! I walked out of the bathroom and found my dad eating corn (they sell Mexican style grilled corn aka “elote” at airports in Iran) chilling near our gate. Me: “You didn’t tell me Iran has no regular toilets!” Dad: “What?” Me: “There’s no toilet seat, just a hole in the floor!” Dad: “Haha. Oh yeah, I thought you knew that. Want some corn?”

Needless to say, I developed strong thigh muscles from all the squatting I had to do to pee (and only pee) in public restrooms. Fortunately, every place I stayed in Iran had toilet farangis (foreign toilets), meaning I had the luxury of American style toilets too while in Iran. Thank God!

Time for take off was around 9 that evening. Our flight on Kish Airlines was delayed and we made it to the beautifully lit-up city of Shiraz a little after midnight…