Iranians hate to wait in line. Going to the bank was an interesting experience. In the states, you have nice neat lines of people waiting to be served. In Iran you have to line up right on top of each other so there is no room for someone to jump the line in front of you. And even doing that, they’ll elbow their way in to just ‘ask the teller a question’ that turns into a transaction. And the tellers aren’t bothered with it. I never saw anyone say ‘sorry sir, you have to wait your turn.’

Personal space in Iran is a misnomer. In the west we need a lot of personal space. When someone enters that space we’re uncomfortable, which some argue is why time spent in an elevator is so ‘weird’ for us. Anyway, in Iran that space is practically non-existent. At the airport while waiting in line, the guy behind me kept his luggage cart touching the back of my legs. I’d turn around to look at him and he’d smile and nod and at one point he started a polite conversation in broken english, asking me about my stay. He had no idea I was fuming about the fact that he was nearly pushing me forward with his cart. It turned out he sat next to me on the plane and we talked most of the way back.

Which leads me to my next observation; Iranians are very curious of the west and very concerned about our opinion of them. The guy in the airport asked me what I thought of his country, the people, etc. He wanted to be sure I was going back to the states with a positive experience so that I would spread the word that Iran is a decent place. I got that from several people. At the bazaar in Esfahan, bazaaris would approach me and start their spiel and once I indicated I wasn’t interested, the conversation would change to where I was from, where I had been in Iran and what I thought of the country. One guy who was very nice and who my sister was impressed with, told us that me spending money as a tourist was worth fifteen barrels of oil, tourism is that important to them.

A lot of the people I met spoke at least a bit of English, which made things easier. I made me feel quite ignorant, because at most I had a handful of phrases I could say in Farsi and almost all of them were basic courtesy’s, not conversational phrases. Once an Iranian realized I was English they were excited to practice their English with me. One good example was a day we were all walking in a park and my sister sat down to take a break. My sister is about 5’9 with blue eyes and very pale skin, so she sticks out as much as I do. She sat across from a class of school-girls and a couple of them approached her and asked if she was English. When she answered yes, even though she speaks good Farsi, she was mobbed with 8 to 10 school girls giggling and speaking to her in broken English. It was an interesting scene.

Until very recently, Tehranians didn’t have much use for fast food. But recently fast food restaurants such as pizza places and fried chicken joints like Kabooky Fried Chicken (with a logo strikingly similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken) have sprung up. This could be the result of a population, 2/3 of which is 30 or younger, or it could be the result of western culture slowly coming back after the revolution. Either way, the fast food issue isn’t looked up well by the older people, who view it as a step in the wrong direction. You don’t have people sitting around the home dinner table eating healthy, fresh, prepared food. Instead you have people eating processed, fatty food filled with preservatives. I didn’t see many overweight Iranians at all during my stay and that’s likely to change if fast food becomes even half as popular as it is in the west!

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