July 15, 2018

Interview by Karla Pequenino for the Pulico, Portugal´s National Newspaper

Karla, a journalist from the online publication of Pulico, reached out in June to ask a few questions about my blog and experiences with couchsurfing. She wrote this eye-opening article after interviewing myself, Stephen Orth from Germany, and Nenad Stojanovic from Serbia. Below is a rough translation of some of the content:

*for the full article in Portugese and to see accompanying pictures from Orth and I, please click here.

“SOCIAL NETWORKS”
Risks do not stop couchsurfers from escaping the traditional tourist itinerary. Social networks that remain under the eye of the police, trips with smugglers, and photographs with rebels are part of the stories of those who use the couchsurfing website to escape the traditional tourist itinerary. Risks are a conscious choice of those who bet on these types of social network systems for travellers trying to get off the beaten track…

In countries like Iran, where foreigners are viewed with suspicion, it is customary for authorities to try to catch couchsurfers in disguise. Publications on social networks give the alert. “Because of that, we often don’t know who we are talking to until we arrive. Our hosts use fake names and addresses online, ”tells PULICO Katrin Einarsdottir, a 31-year-old Icelander who also travels the world with the mobile application. She started using the system at the age of 21, on the first trip she took alone – to Paris, France -, when a friend told her how she could extend the tour abroad without spending money on hotels…

Couchsurfing, which was born as a website in the early 2000s, is the answer for anyone who wants to experience a country’s culture from a citizen’s perspective or has a tight budget. Since 2007, Katrin Einarsdottir has visited nearly 200 countries via the social network for travelers, including sites difficult to explore through a traditional tourist itinerary such as Afghanistan, Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. “I admit that the thought of some countries makes me a little insecure, but I feel more grateful for the effort that people in these countries make to accommodate us, ”says Einarsdottir.

The PULICO tried to contact those responsible for couchsurfing to better understand the phenomenon, but received no answer. In the forum of the site, users share several reasons for their interest in these countries: curiosity to discover very different cultures, willingness to visit world heritage sites without tourists around (the ruins of Herat, Afghanistan, are the most popular places) and willingness to go to places little recommended by travel agencies and the governments of the countries of origin. In Portugal, for example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “discourages all travel to Afghanistan” and recalls that, “if a national is detained in Iranian territory, the scope for intervention by the Portuguese embassy may be limited…

For Einarsdottir, tolerance is the key for this type of travel to work. “We have to be able to give up some opinions and ideas for a while to respect others.” In poorer areas, she warns, it is normal for hosts to ask for money. “Some see websites for talking to foreigners as a way out. Whether to find potential marriage partners, move out of the country, or ask for financial support. ” It has already happened to you? “It is difficult to escape. People wait until there is a relationship of trust and friendship, and only then they ask. I always offer to pay pay for dinners or drinks. To some extent, I think it’s fair because they are hosting me and teaching the culture, but I never give money directly.

On her blog, Einarsdottir describes herself as a cosmopolitan nomad and shares some of the most peculiar customs she encounters on her travels. Iran, where there is a big difference between public and private space, was one of the trips that surprised her the most. “There, they have a legal form of prostitution, supported by the Government. Men pay to marry a woman, for an hour, a week or even a year. During that time, they can have sex without the woman being considered a prostitute,” explains Katrin Einarsdottir. In a paradox, “men and women who are not married or are not family cannot walk on the road together”. However, when traveling by train at night, the Icelandic came to share cabins with both. “This is not seen in hotels or in movies”, concludes the Icelandic…

Both Stephan Orth and Katrin Einarsdottir say that the popularization of smartphones has greatly facilitated the process of meeting real people anywhere in the world. Although access to the Internet and mobile phones is far from universal, both say it is easy to find people connected to the Internet and with a curiosity to learn about other parts of the world in couchsurfing. To avoid problems, German Stephan Orth recommends to always buy a SIM card from the country when you land, avoid hosts without photos on the Internet and, above all, have flexibility.

“Always have a plan B,” says Orth. “Using couchsurfing allows for incredible experiences, but it’s not like going to a longtime friend. Sometimes people are late for hours. Other times, they disappear without a trace. To do this, you need to know how to deal with the unexpected. ”

November 14, 2016

Customs in Iran

Iran was what I expected it to be, in many ways, but I learned about some very strange customs. I always thought Iran was a safe, conservative society full of fairly well-off, educated people – atleast compared to the rest of central Asia. I learned about siga, a form of legal prostitution supported by the government. It’s a system where men can pay a woman to marry her, for 1 hour, 1 week, or even 1 year, and during this rental time, the man can have sex with her without her being called a prostitute or insulting the no-sex-before-marriage custom. For women that do this, or just any ordinary girl who may have lost her virginity to a boyfriend, she can buy her virginity back, through a surgical procedure that takes less than an hour, but has a woman bed-ridden for a week or more, and may take a month or more to recover from. This is probably more expensive than the rental wife, but I don’t know the figures.

Cheaper for women is to spend money on nose jobs, and I don’t know the statistics on that but a lot of women do it. A cheap surgery can be under $1000USD, and wearing the white bandage on your nose out in public during the healing process is like an honour badge, a proud mark of being able to buy a more beautiful nose.

The eyebrows are arguably the second most important facial feature. The natural uni-brow is embraced as a traditional kind of beauty, grown only by the lucky few in the history of Persia’s great empire. Women with detached eyebrows often paint them darker and thicker, sometimes in unnatural shapes or lengths that don’t really make sense to me. Also their lipstick often spills out of the natural boundaries, and then you’re left with a lot of women who have a brightly coloured mouth under their cosmetic noses and piercing eyebrows, all carefully framed by a scarf or hijab.

Food in Iran was amazing, but I was unlucky enough to have my two worst meals within the first 24 hours of being in Iran, and this was because they weren’t typical Iranian foods. My first lunch was a $3 Turkish doner, 95% comprised of an oversized loaf of bread, and %5 shaved meat, and since I’m avoiding gluten, I ate the few scraps of meat and decided to stay away from doners unless Im back in Europe. My first breakfast was a green tea latte (quite good) and a bagel with cream cheese – the bagel was dry, fluffy bread in the shape of a circle and the cream cheese was like those pie-shaped spreadable cheese you get at hotel breakfast buffets. After that I decided to stay away from any international foods and everything was fine, except for being unable to avoid the inevitable bread that follows all meals.

I saw a lot of beautiful mosques and shrines, from behind my hijab and mandatory chador

All the Iranian meals I ate had that home-cooked feeling, even in a restaurant, and the sauces, pickles, spices, herbs and tea that followed them were equally delicious. Bread is always served with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the bread type varied from home to home and city to city. You are meant to eat with your hands, usually with a piece of bread in it, or else you’re only offered a spoon and/or a fork. Knives were not part of the dining experience, even if you had a lamb shoulder or steak kebab.

Most meals were followed by an offer of fruit for desert, and now was the time for mandarins, pomegranates and apples. Strangely enough the fruits were always served on a plate with a knife, and I’ve rarely eaten fruit so often or formally.

Iranians have a word in Farsi called ‘ta-arof,’ and it refers to the kind of hospitality they offer that you cannot refuse – they insist until you either admit you’d appreciate it, or just take whatever it is to avoid the argument. When offered fruit, you’re directed ‘Eat pomegranate.’ Noone asks or cares if you want it, just eat it. If you refuse taarof, its an insult. If it is a question, like “what table would you like?” or “would you like to sit?”, then your answer is barely heard, since your host quickly refutes “no, this table is better” or “please sit here its more comfortable for you.”

Another unbreakable custom was some men’s insistence on not smiling in photos. “Real men don’t smile” I was told, and everyone kept their stone face in my selfies. I also couldn’t understand their strict rules on public behavior – unmarried or unrelated males and females cannot walk in the street together, even if they’re a meter apart on the sidewalk, but on my overnight train to Mashad I shared a 4 person sleeper cabin with 1 woman and 2 men. I could not sit on the back of my friends motorcycle and move thru traffic, but I could get into his car and drive away to anywhere we pleased. I rode one overnight bus as well, and it was the most luxurious bus I’ve ever seen. They call them VIP buses, and a single, reclining leather couch seat was on the left, and basically a loveseat sofa on the right, complete with armrests and a steward that served us snacks and tea.

Traveling times and daily routines were always a little surprising. Overnight trains and buses began in the afternoon, before sunset, and would usually arrive at their destination in the wee hours of the morning before sunrise, just in time for the first prayers of the day. The work week is Saturday to Wednesday, and staying awake til 2 am on a work day was normal, and waking up at 4 am on the weekend was also not unheard of. It’s the year 1395, and none of the months or days of the week are familiar.

I couchsurfed my whole time in Iran, so I often followed my hosts schedule or sleeping patterns. Sometimes I could nap or sleep earlier, but I enjoyed being awake from sunrise to sunset. There isn’t much to do in the evenings, since nightclubs are illegal, although Iranians are crazy about going to parks at night. The conversations I had with my couchsurf hosts were often the same, about my country, my family, my work, and my impressions of Iran. They talked to me about the same, but usually focused more on how they could get to my country, or a wife from outside, or a job in Europe, and shared their less-than-glamorous opinions of Iran. Everyone seemed to want a way out, to get any chance of escaping to the outside world, and had little hesitations about leaving Iran and never coming back. If they didn’t have the vocabulary to explain these feelings, they were still happy to use me as a means of practicing English, and then came more questions about me, my age, and my future plans for marriage and children – since every woman must have those plans.

In many ways, Iranian culture wasn’t so different from western cultures, and my first host in Tehran told me that women basically could act and do the same things we do at home. But after a few weeks of traveling alone in Iran, I realized the few things that do differentiate us are based on really strict, important customs, so it was better not to ask any questions and just conform.

November 12, 2016

Things to do and Surprises to Expect in Tehran

I’ve been looking forward to traveling to Iran ever since I made my first Persian friends at University more than 10 years ago. Persian hospitality was excellent even in Vancouver, so I could only imagine what it’d be like in Iran. Its also a place surrounded by mystical exoticism, a far-east land that few (mass) tourists go, but at the top of all real traveler’s list.

People inside and outside of Iran told me it’d be cheap. My first surprise after arriving in Tehran was that it’s not all that cheap (maybe because I had just been in Georgia), and getting out money is impossible, so the $400US I had had to last for 3 weeks. The metro in Tehran was clean and modern, but contains entire stations without subway maps (making it difficult to navigate for a first time user), and at rush hour, I witnessed two people get trampled in the mob-effect of people crushing in (or out) of the train in the 30 seconds the doors are open (but usually can’t close for another 10 or 20 seconds because all the bodies can’t quite squeeze in).

Darband Street

The first home I stayed at was on a street with old and new house numbers, so the address 16 9^th street was actually 74 9^th Ave, and impossible to know unless you read Farsi numbers. The spelling of translated Farsi words can sometimes get confusing. “E” and “I” are interchangeable, so you have to search for Imam and Emam and Isfahan and Esfahan on a map. “S” and “Z”, and “G” and “Q” are also used inconsistently, and I saw a lot of interesting ‘lost in translation’ phrases on street signs. I saw “3th Alley” and “41th Street”, and highway warning signs for “Use Law Gear” and a few km later “Use Low Geer”.

Nature Bridge by night

The weather was pleasant, warmer than an Icelandic summer, but if it got too warm I couldn’t enjoy the wind in my hair because I had to wear a hijab. Once a gust of wind blew my hijab off the back of my head, and some nearby taxi drivers gawked at me like I had dropped my pants. It’s just hair, and Iranian women have their hair sticking out the front and back of their scarves, but somehow dropping the scarf is ultra revealing. I also didn’t know I had to cover my hips, and thankfully one sweater I had covered my butt, but I quickly bought a longer black robe to better camoflauge.

Tehran had a lot of interesting tourist attractions, like the National Jewelry Museum, beautiful palaces, and an endless bazaar, and the city is backdropped by snow-topped mountains you can hike up thru a street of villages (don’t miss Darband street near Tajrish village!). Tehran is a huge city with millions of people, but parks, green spaces and trees are everywhere, so you don’t really mind the traffic as long as you can easily escape it. Strangely the parks are much busier at night, with couples discreetly holding hands or smoking cigarettes behind the blanket of dark. Tehran doesn’t get any good reviews from travelers, locals, or guide books, but I spent a week there happily visiting parks, strange museums, bazaars and shrines.

Bazaars always sell carpets

What not to miss in Tehran:

the Nature Bridge park
The National Jewelry museum (if you like sparkly things) or the carpet museum (if you want to see a bunch of 19^th century hand woven carpets)
The Tehran bazaar (Within the span of one hour, I saw 5 mosques, 4 nose jobs, 3 midgets, and enough carpets to cover all of Iceland, so its not only entertaining but also a lot to window shopping.
Shahr-e-ray shrine (and bazaar)
Darband Street and Tajrish village

a glipmse of Yazd

And, if you only have time to visit one other place outside of Tehran, make it Yazd – locals there were the nicest people I met, although my host refused to walk with me in fear of getting in trouble, so I had to trail a few meters behind him. But wandering thru the bazaar and old city there was something like living a day in the movie Aladdin.

November 10, 2016

Welcome to Iran

Here’s a letter I wish someone from the Iranian tourism authority had sent me before flying one-way into Iran alone.

One of the many beautiful gardens, this one in Fin, Kashan

Dear Tourist,

Welcome to Iran. We are a land famous for beautiful mosaics, Persian carpets, and ancient empires, and a people known the world over for our hospitality and endless supply of tea. However, please be aware of the following things before traveling in Iran.

We have a rich cultural history surrounding our bath houses and hammams, but presently social bathing is illegal and all our historic bathhouses have been turned into museums. There are banks on every corner, but none will accept your debit card and withdrawing money from abroad anywhere in this country is impossible. Bring a lot of cash because visa and mastercard (or any other international credit cards) are not accepted, and get used to a lot of zeros because even small things, like a taxi fare, are counted in the hundreds of thousands. Our money is printed as and called rials, but people refer to tomans, which is ten times less, so don’t get ripped off by paying ten times too much or insult someone by trying to pay ten times too little. However, for anything touristic, such as entrance to a museum, you will have to pay for an entrance ticket three to ten times more than a local. Also a taxi ride or a hotel room will be (legally) charged at a higher rate, since the government enforces different costs for foreigners. The same cup of coffee will not cost the same for you and a local, even if you order together.

You are not allowed to wear shorts, skirts or sleeveless shirts or anything else that would show your knees or shoulders. Please learn how to read Arabic numbers, since house numbers, streets, costs and bus numbers will usually only be written with them. Drivers are a little crazy and crossing the road inside or outside of a car are equally dangerous. Make sure you ride the metro or public bus in the right compartment – men in the front, women in the back!

If you are a woman, please also note: You must wear a hijab or wrap your head in some sort of scarf in all public places and inside cars. You cannot wear a skirt, but you must have a long enough jacket or shirt or skirt over your pants to cover your hips, so make sure you layer your pants under more clothing, preferably black. You cannot sing or dance in public or infront of men. You are not allowed to drive a motorcycle, or get on a motorcycle behind a man driving, since touching another man who is not your spouse or family member is a crime. Walking down the street with someone of the opposite gender who’s not related to you is also not allowed. Depending on the city you’re in, it’s also illegal to ride a bicycle, smoke cigarettes, or play pool. You must sit in the women’s only section of public transport, and of course mosques have a smaller women-only section which you can enter after wrapping yourself (and every part of your hair) in a chador (a big sheet, usually supplied to you).

Facebook, Twitter, and wordpress are some of the websites blocked in Iran, so make sure you get a virtual hotspot app if you want to access any of these sites. Airbnb and Coucshurfing are technically illegal too, and some couchsurfers are simply using the site to find an outside connection for help out of here, either with a visa, a foreign wife, or better-paying job offer. If you are a single woman, some men may consider trying to marry you, so pretend you’re married and wear a fake wedding ring. Or better yet, travel Iran with a man; it will save you a lot of hassle from taxi drivers wanting your phone number, men in bazaars following you, or random creepy men that assume western women are all super horny and none of them are virgins.

Since you are a tourist, many of these rules slide, but if an ethics police officer harasses you more than 3 times for any of the above, the punishment is prison or lashes, and adultery or rape will get you executed.

Welcome to Iran. We hope you enjoy your stay!