On the playground - evening stroll in Zanjan
Smoking Shisha with the bus driver

Pizza Pizza - hooray, no Kebaps!

Causing chaos at the pizzashop

...

The Blue Mosque, Tabriz

Tabriz to Zanjan

We needed a bit of a sleepin, so did not leave before 10am. Breakfast was interesting, especially with the first experience of wearing a headscarve first thing in the morning. People were looking at us, but it is more out of interest. It is just a thing to get used to and even if we do not appreciate wearing them, we have to accept it, it´s the law...

Anyways, we visited a museum about Azerbaijan - since Tabriz is situated in East Azerbaijan Province - and saw some bones, cups, daggers, Paintings, old coins, and a pretty cool sculpture exhibition. It was worth it I have to say, although most of the people were not so enthusiastic at first.

After that we walked to the Blue Mosque. It was my first Mosque to visit from the inside as I did not have time for any in Istanbul. It was very pretty, a dome, with only a few blue mosaic decorations left. The usual kodakmoments in the camera and off onto the bus again.
Although we had tried to organize a better lunchday today, we were not so lucky. After hours of driving through no-mans-land and even our tourguides getting lost (1. how can you get lost on a straight road, 2. how can you not know where to stop for lunch if you are doing this ever so often, 3. i thought they would have cousins and uncles with restaurants everywhere - mistaken...), we took a dirtroad to cross onto the other way of the highway, the bus got nearly stuck underneath a low bridge, and we ended up at a place where we got - mor cordboard bread; - and yoghurt.
Brilliant.
If I think about it, this was exactly what I wanted, a diet after Europe. So I didn´t really complain, but well, I am not really in the position to do so, unless for the sake of the others. And I did complain, nicely, but the guides did not seem to understand clearly, that big men need food!
If there is a will, there is a way, so everyone just stocked up at the nut and fruit shops in Zanjan, so they had enough for the next famine to survive...
We arrived in Zanjan in the afternoon and as it was a holiday (there seem to be many holidays here in Iran, we hadnt had a normal working day so far!), most of the shops were closed. So no Bazaar. No fresh shirt, and keep on washing the one that I had everynight - and wearing the same one again every day. For the next 5 days. But this is not a fashionshow, this is adventure :-)
We ventured into the town centre and it was absolutely amazing to meet the locals. They stopped their cars driving past us, jaws dropping down onto the pavement, people turning around, giggling and pointing at us. We were clearly some celebrities!
After having purchased the food we even pushed it a bit further and sat down in the middle of the local green, full of Iranians. They seemed to enjoy it, change of scenery and all that. Not many people spoke english and more than salam and jetori (How are you?), was not part of our vocabulary yet.
But it was enough to amuse them. Luckily we found a flash pizza place and caused total mayhem by putting our order in. A very nice lady was our translator and helped us with the toppings. Huge pizzas, enough for the next 3 lunches I would say. Happily full we strolled around the town until we got picked up by the bus driver, Sayeed.
He offered us a Shisha, or hubble-bubble as they call it here. Before we went to bed we walked down the main street to see if there was anymore life going on on the streets. The difference between western culture and here is definately that people spend time outside instead of in the pubs. Lots of families were sitting in a park having barbecues, chatting away. Each park in Iran has got public gym equipment and it is being used by everyone - men and women. Of course we also had to have a go at it, noticing our lack of fitness since sitting on the bus for weeks.
All good though, time to go to bed now!