After my first days in Tehran and Dizin it was time to start the “real travel”. I didn’t make a lot of plans before leaving for Iran and just wanted to see what will come my way. I decided my next destination will be Hamedan, apparently one of the oldest cities in Iran. On my way I passed by Qazvin. According to the owner of the hostel in Qazvin it is one of the nicest cities in Iran and well worth a visit, so I decided to take a short tour through the city.
Qazvin is a small town west of Tehran, where the cars are few and still let you pass when crossing the street; and when I arrived at noon it was as quite as a village can get. I still hadn’t really found my travel legs and it was just the right spot to get into a bit of a travel mood. The owner of the hostel was right. Qazvin was beautiful. The only busy place I saw was the bazar, and I decided to skip that hassle with all my luggage and instead opted for a quite square inside a beautiful historical complex to have some Ash. I gotta say, as a vegetarian you have only a few food options in Iran and Ash is one of Iranian’s favourite dish, but I had a little trouble getting used to it. It’s kind of a green slimy soup with pasta and beans and for me at first it tasted exactly like it looked like. Too bad, as I saw my food options declining. (Update: It’s impossible to avoid Ash in Iran and after the second or third time I actually started to enjoy it.) Afterwards I wondered around the city until it was time to hop on the bus to Hamedan.
In Hamedan I stayed at a lovely homestay close to the city centre. Hamedan was bigger than I expected and it didn’t look like a historical city at all. It’s a busy, big city with a few historical sites spread around the city. It was a bit sad to see their history so little taken care of. I visited the tomb of Baba Taher, an Iranian poet of the 11th century who wrote his poems in the Hamadani dialect, and the Alaviyan Dome, built during the 12th century and famous for its Islamic architecture. In the basement is the blue tiled tomb of the Alaviyan family. Even though the name says it all, I still imagined something a little different before seeing it live. A little outside of the town are the Ganjnameh inscriptions, one of the oldest stone inscriptions in the world. But you would not know of their importance by just passing by.
On my last night, I wanted to cook dinner for the family because they were so curious about European food. It was a little difficult though as I couldn’t really think of a good German dish and was also not sure if it was even possible to find the ingredients for it so at the end I opted for a paella as I thought Spanish is good enough since it was my home for the last three years. But even there we needed to improvise a bit and at the end it was some kind of rice mix dish with chicken and shrimps (two things I haven’t cooked nor eaten in a long time). I think if I showed it to a Valencian they would start crying, but the family enjoyed it and that is the most important thing. After dinner they took me to the highest point of Hamedan where you had an amazing view over the city by night.
The next day it was time to leave for Kashan, a must see on the typical Iranian tourist route. It’s a nice, smaller town with lots of historical buildings in and outside of the city. When I walked around the bazar a 12-year-old girl approached me and asked if she could speak English with me. She seemed so happy to practice her skills that I couldn’t say no and so she walked with me around the bazar and played my personal tour guide for a few hours, always followed by her parents who made sure she was fine. Her English was so impressively good that I waited for her to correct me any minute.
After 3 days, a tour to Abyaneh (pretty) and Fin Gardens (tourist trap) and several walks around the city and historical sites it was time to keep on moving. Esfahan was waiting.
