The Royal Dutch Airline. Supposed to be a good one. If like me, you travel from the North America to the Middle East [or even Europe] a lot, you’re probably quite familiar with the airline, given that it’s usually easy to find tickets for any time of the year. But honestly, I think my trip to Iran and back, was probably my last KLM experience EVER. I’ve had it with them. The flights always end up nightmare-ish, and there hasn’t been a single time when I’ve been in and out of the Shiphol Airport [Amsterdam] without some sort of a horror story.

Coming back from Iran, as I wrote in the last post, I was in pretty rough shape. I was really hoping for a painless trip, which unfortunately is exactly the opposite of what I had. The flight from Tehran to Amsterdam wasn’t “that” bad, just the usual hassle with the terribly tightly placed seats of KLM. In the Shiphol Airport [aka the bane of my existence] as usual we checked the info boards for our flight time and gate a few times, last of which was about 30 minutes before we headed to the gate.

When we arrived to the gate, the check in line was pretty huge, as expected for that time of the year. SO we stood in the line. First the security checked our boarding passes and passports, and then we entered the 2 kilometer line for having our hand luggage checked. As usual for this bloody airport, they had us empty our backpacks on their checking tables, take off our jackets, earphones, …, all the way down to my boots. The point is, we were in that bloody line for nearly an hour and a half. So then came the final security check before boarding… and that’s when the officer gives us this weird look:
– “Oh uhmm… says here you’re going to Toronto?”
– “Well yes?!”
– “But… but that’s not possible, we’re going to Washington!!”
– “Exactly WHAT are you talking about??”
– “The gate was changed!”

So, well, my eyes went round. Apparently the gate had changed while we were standing in the bloody line [we have a habit of going early!] and NO ONE had made an announcement. Worse than that, the bloody security had CHECKED OUR BOARDING PASSES AND LET US IN!!!!! We ran back to the new gate, but the flight had already left, and NO ONE HAD CALLED OUR NAMES OUT. Imagine that. I mean how incompetent can people be??

Given my past experiences with the bloody airport and the sodding airline, I knew what we needed to do then. We went to the transfer desk, and I had to explain to the less than smart people in charge how they had messed up. They said that there was another plane leaving for TO about 4 hours later, and they’re going to put us on the waiting list for that flight. Of course since it was holidays time, it was quite possible we’d not be able to get on that plane. So then I asked them what we were supposed to do if we can’t get in that plane, and they said we may have to think about a hotel.. ah well, my tiredness mixed with full annoyance and the gas poisoning left me no patience for staying at a hotel for God knows how long… we really had to get on that plane. I was thinking to myself, that quite possibly, I’ll have to start shouting at them like the last time [about which I will write next!], for them to understand the mess they’ve made and put us on the next plane….

Anyway… we were in that airport for nearly 7 hours, after which we finally did get on that next plane. That is of course, after repeating the bloody irritating process of getting checked. The entire trip was about a good 20 hours. When we arrived to Toronto, I was only 10% conscious. Ah well, at least we arrived…

But hey, the back to Iran trip wasn’t even my worst experience with KLM. I had one even worse than that. =P A couple of years ago, when I was going to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays, my plane from Toronto to Zurich was stuck on the ground for more than 7 hours, with the passengers actually sitting in it! Supposedly it was due to the bad weather, except all other flights from other airlines left with no trouble… The 7 hour delay of course resulted in me missing my flight from Amsterdam to Zurich. Me, and everyone else on the plane! So it was a real mess. First I had to walk the length of the Shiphol Airport 50 times back and forth to find out where I should go and who I should talk to, in order to get myself on another plane. And once I got there, it looked like they had NO idea what they were going to do with the crowd of irritated people standing in front of them. What’s funny is that there was NO talk of putting us in a hotel or something, and since again it was crowded and all seats in all planes were fully booked, they seemed to not even have any hopes of getting us to hour destinations any time soon.

Finally I lost it. I was tired, irritated and annoyed as hell. And of course worried about what was going to happen to my luggage. So the next person who gave me the impression that they simply didn’t know what they were talking about, got me shouting. Yeah, that doesn’t happen very often…. I had to scream at them, in order to get them to put me in the next flight and send me to Zurich. My entire trip was more than 24 hours… yeah, fun!

A rather odd coincidence was that there was this old Polish lady with me on the plane to Amsterdam, and when I was flying back from Amsterdam to Toronto I saw her again, she was on the same plane… again! What are the chances of that anyway? Well, she told me that there were people from the Toronto to Amsterdam flight that I was on, who actually got stuck in the bloody Shiphol airport for days, before they were put on a plane to anywhere or given a hotel room to. Very uncool eh?

So that’s what KLM is like. Their security people often shout and scream at you if you so much as look at them wrong, their stewards and stewardesses often won’t bring you a sodding  glass of water even after you ask for it 5 times, their seats are soooo tightly arranged that won’t let you an easy breath, and their food is just… well… I’m not even going to start with that….

Even though I don’t like bashing and badmouthing… I had to write this. Actually a couple of my friends suggested I should do so too.. I guess I’m hoping it’ll save someone some trouble, if they read this and not go for KLM. =)

So I’ve been back from Iran for a few days now… and I’m already missing everyone and everything. I’ve taken more than 6000 photos during the whole trip, and I’m currently busy with selecting the best of them to post to my gallery. So hopefully you’ll start seeing the first groups of it appear over there soon enough…

My trip back was a horrible one, and that’s putting it very very lightly. =)) The bloody KLM airline put me in a world of trouble again [I’ll write the whole story in my next post, about KLM! =P], and that was only after I was already gas poisoned on my trip to Tehran’s I.K. Airport. The cab I was on, together with another 50 cars or so, were stuck for nearly 3 hours in between 2 groups of people going the religious “Moharram” mourning demonstrations… at least that’s what it was supposed to be [but it was in face everything BUT!]. So now imagine Tehran’s level of air pollution that nowadays is enough to give you some serous headache and nausea if you’re not used to it, combined with the smoke of burnt “stuff”, and other sorts of “unknown” gasses…. for 3 straight hours. I was nearly dead when I finally got to the airport, and the exact same way when I finally arrived to Toronto after a trip that was much longer than it was supposed to be thanks to the horrible KLM. Oh well… had some Vodka, fell asleep and was all better the morning after. Though it took a few days for me to feel like myself again….

On the good side of things, well, New Year is always fun! =D

Well, given I don’t have any sort of access to the internet at the moment, I just write this now and hopefully post it later… =P

So we spent 7 days on the Kish island, and I think I could have spent another 2 or 3 weeks in there and still would not have had enough time to do all I wanted to do… Kish is a small island, but there’s a lot of nice places to see and fun things to do in it. Just walking around the island on the shore is something that I never get enough of. And the sea shells there have the most amazing colours…

The last time I was on this island it was about 10 years ago. Much has changed since then. There’s been a lot of improvement in terms of living conditions, and tourist attractions both. Some of the more unknown parts of the island including the historical sights and the natural beauties are being paid much more attention to, and that has had some positive and negative results both. It’s good that more people are getting to really know the island, but then the government has unfortunately done a very efficient job completely destroying the natural beauty of some of these parts. For instance, the part of the shore called “The Greek Ship” [because of the ancient Greek Ship that’s been stuck in there for hundreds of years now!], used to be an amazingly beautiful spot to watch the sunset of the island from. And that was all due to the natural formation of the rocks on there, and the whole ancient feeling about the place. Except none of that remains now. The government has made a “park” in there… something completely fake… horrible, ugly!

Another instance of a really shameful destruction of the island attractions, is what they’ve done to the “Green Tree”. This tall and huge tree is a few hundred years old, and it’s braches used to come down from the top all the way to the ground around it.. beautiful scene it was. Well guess what…. they’ve cut off all of those old tall branches, leaving the tree completely naked. I mean, how low on IQ can some people possibly be? This has been a true crime in my opinion….

There’s a ton of new shopping malls on the island, as well as new hotels and sports centers. The air is fresh and clean, which is the exact opposite of what you get in Tehran, and there’s no traffic. Well, I guess  I better leave the rest of the describing to be done through my rather large collection of photos that I’ve taken there. Will upload soon…. 😉

From November 10th to 14th, we had a short trip to Shiraz. Yeah yeah, I know, it’s ridiculous number of days for a city that marvelous, but.. well… it’s complicated. I couldn’t stay there any more than that.. mainly due to the fact that I still have much more to do in Tehran, and I also want to spend a week in the Kish island…

It was a nice, complicated and eventful 4.5 days. I finally had the chance to meet my aunt [father’s sister] and my cousin [Katy] for the fist time. We had a nice time with them.. and my aunt showed me a large load of old family photos that I had never seen the like of, before. It felt as if I was getting to know a part of myself that I had never known anything about… a family I never actually had.

We stayed at Pooneh’s place [other side cousin] like the old days… and we had some good fun with her and Golnar and Kaveh [her kids]. We paid a visit to the Vakil Bazaar where I took another really large load of photos, had a picnic in Chaasorkh, had very original Persian Kabab in a classic Persian restaurant called “Sharzeh”, and had a great little party with friends too [dancing… dancing… dancing… ;)]. Oh, and I did some shopping too….. 😉

And now I’m back to Tehran. =) Yesterday evening I was out with TanTan again, did some souvenir shopping and had a great shrimp pasta in a pizza place called “Aared”. And today… today was fantastic, I met my great old friend Jinous after 6 bloody years. It was fantastic seeing her again… we had a lovely evening. =) She’s just marvelous… <3

Due to all sorts of lacks of access, including the lack of access to the web and lack of access to a stationary chair [ =P ], I didn’t get the chance to post about what I’ve been up to in the past week or so… now I’m going to give you a general overview. And by the way, this is all aside from the 4th of November events… since I did already manage to post enough about that on Facebook…..

As I mentioned before, we were planning on seeing Lynn’s short film that was featured in the Roshd international film festival… and we did manage that, with a bit of adventure that is. The movie theatre showing this specific movie was “on the other side of” Tehran… non of my friends knew how to drive us there and even the driver of the cab we called was semi-uncertain about the location… so it was a bit funny, driving around and asking people where we were supposed to go. But we did get there at the end, and Lynn’s film was definitely worth the trip. =) Some very nice films were shown this year, and we managed to see a number of them in various movie theatres.

Unfortunately none of my favorite movies this year were from Iranian artists. With all the talent and intelligence that clearly exists in the Iranian youth, it was quite a bit sad to see that most of their movies were rather weak. Once upon a time, a couple of really amazing Iranian movie directors made some fantastic movies that were showing the pain and the hardship in the lives of the people living in small villages of Iran. Since then, it is as if a large number of Iranian artists think that if they just pick up their cameras and go take some movies from Iran’s small villages, that’ll make a great movie. Excuse me, NOT SO!

On my quest to see as much as I possibly can of the new developments in Tehran’s exterior and interior, my friends have been taking me to some interesting spots. TanTan took me to see a number of shopping malls and restaurants and such… One of the more interesting places she took me to, was this mall called “Milaade No”. Now the mall itself was rather good looking, but that’s not the interesting part of it. On the 3rd floor of the mall, there are 2 face to face shops that have some very cute decoration and jewelry stuff. The 2 stores are ran by 2 gentlemen and 1 lady, and all 3 are deaf. And guess what, in my entire shopping experience in Tehran in this trip, I hadn’t been treated so nicely and politely in ANY stores anywhere. With all the unfortunate behavior you keep running into these days, in the truly damaged society of Tehran [which I will write more about, later], this was a breath of fresh air. WAY TO GO FOLKS, LOVED YOU! I’m planning on going back there again for some serious shopping…. 😉

Mahyar finally took us to this café that he’s constantly talking about. It’s called the “Gramaphon” café, and I can see now why he’s so into this place! It’s this tiny little café that hardly has enough room for a few tables, and it has one of the neatest decoration I’ve ever seen. It gives you this really warm feeling of being in a very old and very familiar place… it’s difficult to describe, so I’ll just upload the photos I took. 😉 I guess the nicest part of it all is the company…

Pehgah and her dad showed us around this shopping mall called “Tirajheh”. Another very nice looking new shopping mall in Tehran… but this one I really don’t recommend going to! Why? Because…. uh…. how do I explain this. Let me give you an instance of what may happen in there. My mom was with us that day… and the very first shop she went into, she nearly got into a fight with one of the attendants. Here’s what it was like… it was this perfume shop, and the first thing about it that took my attention was that one of the attendants was standing there behind the cash, shaving his arm!!! Yeah. No kidding. I mean… ewww!? Then my mom went in to ask about a couple of perfumes she’s into, and before she finished her sentence, the other attendant was already packing up the perfume to give it to her… no mention of the price, no question as to whether she actually wants to buy it or not… and my mom was a bit surprised, so she mentioned to the guy that she’s asking a question… and the guy goes “Oh, so you’re just asking questions? You’re just here to ask questions then??” SOOOO BLOOODY RUDE! I’ve not seen behavior like that anywhere in this world before… and heck I’ve been to a few places! Well you can imagine how my mom reacted… and the only thing I could do was to go in, and pull her out using all my bloody might.

So well, above was an example of what I mean when I say that the society here is sick. Due to all the pressure that the people here have undergone in the past few years, they have changed. Not that things like this didn’t exist in the past, but in the 6 years that I hadn’t been to Iran, the change has been HUGE. A large part of the society have became rude, uncaring and extremely indecent [so sorry to say…]. There needs to be some sort of a change… and that’s what people were shouting for, on November 4th….

Anyway…. tomorrow evening I’m flying to Shiraz for a short visit. Haven’t been there in nearly 12 years or so. Will take tons of photos…. =) I’ve taken a large load of photos so far, and I’ll do my best to upload them soon.

And something else… I’m searching for my dad.

Tonight I heard people shouting “death to the dictator” and “the political prisoners must be freed” on the rooftops around our building. It was the first time I was hearing it for myself… up close… And from what I hear, on the 4th of November [students day], people are going to be in the streets again….

On the other news, today I paid a visit to the “Tajrish” marketplace to shop for Persian stuff… and noticed that the place has been prettified and renovated…. but the mud on the ground is still the same… darn… somebody please do something about that! =P

Oh, I forgot to mention before…. last week we went to the new and fabulous Azadi movie theatres compound, and watched this VERY Persian movie called “The Rule Book”. I have to mention that the compound itself is worth making a movie out of. Pretty. Darn good architecture possibly the prettiest theatres compound I’ve ever seen. And I’m not putting that lightly!! As for the the movie… well… let just say that me, my mom and TanTan managed to drop more water than the Niagara Falls while watching it. Not that it’s a truly sad movie or anything… but it’s showing some of the bigger scars on the face of this society… and that’s why you end up crying…

Reporting from Iran again, have to start by saying that I’m still having loads of fun. 😉 I’ve so far had a chance to see around the city a bit, eat some very fine food and pack up some of my childhood stuff.

Something very special that I’ve had in the past few days [a large amount of it that is ;)], is Persian ice-cream. Well I’m not even going to try to describe what that is and what it tastes like… because there’s only 2 options: either you have or you will try it for yourself at some point, or you’ll miss out big time. =P Those huge pieces of frozen high concentration cream are just… heavenly.

I also had another very original Persian food called “Kabab Loghme”. Basically it’s bread wrapped kebab of a special sort, with some onion and herbs. And it tastes fantastic, I can tell you that. 😉

Also… we finally had a chance to have a dinner at Pantry pizzeria/restaurant. This would be Tehran’s oldest pizza place, and it serves very fine Italian pizza. Love it. I’m only somewhat disappointed to know that their Mexican food is no longer that great…  But anyway it was a great night with TanTan, Mahyar, Yazdan, my cuz Pooneh and my mom. =)

Thanks to TanTan and Yazdan I’ve had a rather extensive tour of Tehran streets up to now, specially since Yazdan managed to give us a nice evening ride around some of the more central + old areas of the city. I also spent a very delightful + fun evening with TanTan’s family, they’re just amazing! =)

Tomorrow the Roshd international short film festival starts.. and fortunately I already have a number of guest tickets for me and a bunch of friends. We’re planning to see Lynn’s short animation film which is being shown in the International films category. The only problem is, I have no idea when they’re going to show it as of yet! The festival is a week long, it’s starting tomorrow and the people in charge haven’t released the schedule yet. Amazing eh? Hopefully we’ll figure it out in time…

And I swear, I have indeed taken a large load of pictures. I simply haven’t had the time to select the best and upload them as of yet… but I will, soon, promise! =)

Thanks to my fantastic friend TanTan, I’ve been seeing more of Tehran in the past few days. One of the more “outstanding” places she showed me so far, was the “Tandis” shopping mall in Tajrish street. Wellllll words sort of fail to describe what I saw in there… aside from the fact that it was proven to me that the Iranian government no longer has a problem with foreign brands opening branches in Iran, which was the positive side of things, I also saw a whole load of faces, hairs and make ups that I’m afraid I’d neither call nice nor even remotely stylish. My only description for what I saw would be “too much”. Hey, I’m all for funky fashion [you probably know that ;)], but I have this old school idea that “looking good” should be the operative phrase at the end.

Well, it looks to me like unfortunately due to the insane amount of pressure that the gov has put on people during the past 3 years, the goal has became to simply do something that defies the tight Islamic rules as much as possible, rather than looking good. And for the love of God, can somebody please explain to me the philosophy of the / eyebrows? I mean come on people, it’s sodding UGLY! So yeah… that’s what I’ve been seeing in the streets and the shopping malls… expensive brands and pretty ugly looks. =P

I have to mention though… it’s really quite a lot of fun doing the sight-seeing with TanTan and awesome friends. =) And I had quite a bit of laughs with TanTan in this small restaurant in Tandis… since basically everything that they had on their menu, they didn’t have in reality. =P I’ll post pictures soon….. Oh, and I felt near death at some point when I was near Tajrish street… I officially no longer can take Tehran’s polluted air… I was feeling so bloody sick… 

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but flying to Iran and getting through to the IK Airport happened quite smoothly and without any trouble. =) I mean the whole IK Airport experience was quite unusually easy… Our luggage arrived with no delay, and our hand luggage + suitcases where only put through the scanner, all together, and no one opened ANY of our luggage.. they didn’t even tell us to take out our electronics, just the notebooks! And we just simply walked through the sensor thang, and no one checked our clothing… in fact no one even looked us in the face during the whole process! We were out of the Airport in about half an hour after our arrival!!!!! I mean… heck, when was the last time that happened in Iran?? =) Very nice surprise there….

Then Mahyar came after us and drove us [and all our suitcases, oh yeah! ;)] home. It was such a wondrous experience seeing Tehran again after 6 years.. and arriving home broke me into tears. Thanks to our beloved friends, our apartment [yes, we’re actually staying in our own home this time..] actually looked quite livable since the very moment we arrived.

Up to this moment, I’ve mostly been doing 2 things:

– Having fun with our friends who are coming here back to back to see us + going out with TanTan,

– Taking my old “stuff” out of closets, huge packages and storage… making decisions as to what will be kept and what will be thrown away, and re-packing what I’ll be sending to Switzerland… And by “stuff” I mean… all sorts of things…. from drawings of the 2 year old me, to my Nintendo games… to old pictures… to letters… to…. oh God… this part has not been very easy, I can tell you that…..

So I haven’t done a lot of Tehran seeing as of yet, and there’s a large ton of my friends that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet… but will be doing that in the coming days, and possibly after a short visit to Shiraz. =)

Will be posting updates here on regular basis [well, as regular as possible in here!], and photos will follow soon. 😉

Well this is just amazing! The possibilities of what can be done with this type of robot are infinite…

Apparently the blob design is about a year old… they have improved designs now that are a bit different, going towards the ability to include sensors… some are palms sized. This blew my mind….