Super delayed back-from-vacation and going-to-BronyCon blog post! Yay! · 7:52am Aug 3rd, 2017
Hi all. Yes, I'm alive. Firstly, sorry for the massive delay. A lot of things happened.
So like a couple days after we got home, my computer's hard drive took a dump. Fortunately, windows and SMART bios thing were kind enough to warn me that my hard drive was about to burn and told me to back up all my porn fanfics, which I promptly did. A day later, it actually quit altogether, so I'm back on this potato that I was on when I was still working on my granddad's house. It's a decent computer on the surface, but it's moody af. Also, I had to go pick up my server from the server hosting dump, so I could reformat it because of ransomware. Filthy, stinking ransomware. A friend and cohort sent me 3 solid state drives, 2 for the server, 1 for me. And guess which one turned out to be a brick? So my pc has to wait some more.
I've also been working my ass off on side jobs at my friend's house. There's always something wrong with that dump, and a lot of it involves crawling in uncomfortable, filth-ridden areas. The house has had 2 additions put onto it, so the first one covered the original concrete patio, and it has about 2 feet height to crawl around in, so I could fix his dryer vent. Which, incidentally, had broken open in there, so the entire crawlspace was layered in dryer lint. And cobwebs. The second addition crawlspace covers the second concrete patio, but fortunately, I only had to poke my head in there, not actually go in. The second addition has a porch, however, and under the porch is where I had to go because somebody wanted a water spigot as far away from the actual spigot as possible. And that's what he got. As well as a myriad of other things.
Bright side, he hosted a barbeque with friends and we got shitfaced, and went clubbing downtown. I'm not really a club type of guy - not my scene. Irritatingly loud music and a room full of drunken degenerates (who aren't my friends) is not really my idea of a good time. Still, it was a fun night. One of the bouncers noted my Rainbow Dash t-shirt and said it was awesome. He also said there was a dress code and that I should get the fuck out. I'm just kidding, he was a nice guy. But there was a dress code, so...
Ok, so like, I promised photos of my trip to Iran, but I don't have any photo-hosting thing that lets me direct link photos. So, you're going to have to imagine the photos are here. Oh, and heads-up, I'm not very photogenic. I really hate looking at photos of myself. It's not that I hate the way I look, it's that I hate the way I look in photos.
Here, look at this one first. I totally had to stop and snap a photo. We were all walking through so I couldn't take more...
Istanbul airport This was on the way back, actually. The layover is really a blessing and a curse. It's about 8 hours, which is like... annoying cuz you just want to get it over with already, but then also, you can go sleep on a bench. My dad knows a relatively quiet spot. We didn't actually venture out in Istanbul though, shame, it looks like a really nice place.
Around Tabriz Random photos about town.
Fancy bakery Nice dump in Tabriz that makes good cookies. Though to be perfectly honest, I don't really like the cookies that my dad and sisters like. They bought like 8 boxes of those, and 1 box of cookies that I do like. lol
My Aunt's house It's a nice house that had a city grow up around it, apparently she owned all the land around it, but sold it to developers, they're building condos.
Tabriz Bazaar This place was amazing and possibly my favorite sight. Apparently, the world's biggest indoor bazaar. I believe it too. I only got to see a few sections, but it was big. It's funny though, some of the parts look beautiful, and some of it looks like they just haphazardly slapped it together... 200 years ago. Like in the more ordinary hallways, the halls are not straight, they snake and wind without pattern. And the typical hall is maybe 10 feet wide, with 3 feet on either side occupied by sellers' tables, and hundreds of people trying to squeeze through the remaining 4 feet. And there are guys whose job it is to cart things around (either from inside to out, outside to in, or from shop to shop) and they have to get through the crowds, so they'll run your ass over. To let you know they're coming, they keep repeating 'y'allah,' which literally means 'oh god' but it's one of those words that means anything in context. They say it meaning 'come on' or 'move it.' It's funny though. Anyway, there's shop after shop selling just about anything you can imagine: jewelry, raw gold, carpets, clothes, appliances, carpets, spices, fabric, kitchen goods, shoes, belts, carpets, I mean you name it. It's like the ancient equivalent of a department store. And most shops are very specialized. So like a store that sells only pants, or only hats. Awesome though.
Telecabin So like, nobody there knows how to pronounce this, especially not my dad (who incidentally says everything incorrectly even in his native language, as my sisters and I were repeating to relatives several words that he had taught us, and we were getting a lot of funny looks), so at some point, I googled just what the hell is a telecopy? Well apparently, it's a fax machine, as I suspected. But this thing is basically just an enclosed ski lift. It goes up a mountain next to the city, then horizontally over to the next mountain peak, and there's like a crappy restaurant and a bench at the end. But the views of the city are amazing.
Pottery shop This is like a pottery superstore in... some town that's famous for their pottery. I forget the name lol. We looked around a bit, and we were like 'ok, cool, let's go,' but my aunt had other ideas and started picking things to buy. She picked and picked... for HOURS. We were left sitting around and watching her amass a pile, I mean easily a pallet's worth of boxed up pottery. Which was a concern because we were about 5 hours away from Tabriz, on our way back from the Alisadr cave, and though we had a fairly big minivan, it was filled with luggage and people. And additionally, the roads weren't that great, and neither was my uncle's driving, he never seemed to see the speed bumps, so we wondered how much pottery would survive the trip. They also had a restaurant in the basement where we had lunch, and omg the food was amazing. I got lamb stew, and... interestingly I had to travel to the other side of the planet to learn how you're supposed to eat it, because my dad never taught me. Granted, the restaurant was sort of fancy-schmancy, so bear that in mind. So they're a pottery-themed restaurant, the stew comes out in a tall clay pot, presumably cooked in that pot, in an oven for many hours. They give you a big bowl and a specific type of flat bread, that is maybe about as thick as a pita bread, but a bit fluffier. So you rip up the bread into bite size pieces and put it in the bowl, and pour most of the broth into it, then eat the soggy bread with a spoon. You then put what's left of the stew in the now-empty bowl, and (this, I find, is why Iranians don't cut things into bite-size pieces when making stews!) you mush the meat and vegetables up with the supplied metal mushing-device, and then eat it. First time I ever saw the stew mushing device.
Alisadr cave This was a beautiful water cave, and huge. Also a huge tourist attraction. There are rivers that go all around, and the first part of the tour is you getting into a one of a string of boats that are pulled along by a paddle boat, and one lucky tourist gets to hop in the paddle boat and help the tour guide paddle. That lucky fuck was me, and mind you, I had a cold and felt a bit like shit. But it wasn't that bad. Awesome cave. And the two tour paddlers I paddled with were quite nice as well. I told them I was American and they each greeted me with a little english, asked me where I was from and all that. The tour went on through all sorts of other bits. One 'room' was gigantic, literally about 100 feet tall inside, maybe more, and even wider. There's a hotel we stayed at right there, and a little tourist park area.
Roadtrip photos That cave is about 8 hours drive away from Tabriz. Which was unpleasant. I hate travelling. Mostly because I can't really get comfortable sitting in a car seat or an airplane seat, and I can't sleep unless I'm laying down, and even then all the conditions have to be just right. I'm not so bad if I'm driving though, although I suppose that still depends on the car, because I really hate driving long distance in a Dodge Caravan seat. It's all stiff-backed and uncomfortable.
Tomb of Avicenna See, the original plan was to drive to the cave, sleep overnight, see the cave in the morning, and got to Hamadan and see some sights. Well, thanks to a late start on the cave, and my aunt taking hours to shop for a shitload of pottery she didn't really need, the plan devolved into let's drive to Hamadan, poke our heads out, and gtfo. So this was the one place we stopped at. Apparently this guy was a famous scholar, doctor, poet, chemist, philosopher, and all sorts of things. And we're talking like 1000 years ago. This is his tomb, and apparently - little known fact - he's also buried with his protégé. *scratches chin* It was pretty interesting and the museum... person (what do you call them? Not a curator), anyway, she spoke excellent English, which was a little surprising. Most people there, even younger people, might only manage a couple words, but she gave us the whole tour in English.
Honeycomb village This dump is like 45 minutes away from Tabriz, and a huge tourist trap. I'm not sure if it's so named because the village is a collection of caves in the side of a mountain that resembles a honeycomb, or if it's because they have a shitload of beekeepers there, which they do. Since it's a tourist trap, all the villagers operate basically shitty gift shops out of their caves houses. They all sell the same crap (a lot of Chinese trinkets) and local honey and spices and such. Oh, and camel wool clothing. Though honestly, I'm not sure why, I didn't see any camels around. Only chickens, ducks, and goats. Anyhow, they obviously used to be an impoverished farming community, but because of their unique housing situation, they managed to turn the place into a booming tourist town. Now these fucks have electricity, running water, satellite tv, gas stoves, and freaking refrigerators. IN A CAVE. Without a box of scraps. But maybe a box of chickens.
Amir Nezam's house This is some dude's house from like the 1700s. Some politician or royalty or something, idk. But it's literally in Tabriz so it's really easy to go and see the dump. It's actually a beautiful house, and wonderfully restored.
St. Stephanos Monastery This place I think we saw after the waterfall, which I'll get to. It's an ancient Armenian Christian monastery, from like, a 1000 years ago. You know, everything seems to be 1000 years ago... why does that seem so familiar? Anyway, like any self-respecting monastery, it was on top of a mountain. Mercifully, like any good tourist spot, there was a road up and a parking lot, but there was still a fair hike uphill. Amazing mountain views though. And we had some delicious melon juice at the refreshment bar.
Aras river This is the river that makes the northern border of Iran. From the pictures, across the river is another country, Azerbaijan, which used to be part of the Soviet union, and before WW1 (I think) part of Iran. We drove along quite a bit of the river when we went to and from the cave and the waterfall.
Waterfall So another tourist trap. We got there, tons of people (it was a Friday [the weekend for them]) and I'm thinking I'm gonna see Niagara. We walk along the paths, occupied by visitors who had set up camps along the paths, literally with tents and shit, and I hear moving water, I'm thinking cool. We get closer, and I look over the small cliff and I see a tiny 2 foot wide stream and I'm thinking wtf kind of pissant waterfall is this gonna be? So we get down there and like it's not one big waterfall, but the entire cliffside is a really wide waterfall, but just sort of dripping water. Was pretty cool though. So many people. They literally had people selling roasted corn and tea, with their tables IN the stream water lol.
Shah Goli park This is another hot tourist place in Tabriz itself. It was once a royal retreat (that house in the middle of the lake) but my dad claims it was at one point a nightclub until, and I'm quoting my dad, 'these assholes fucked everything up.' He's referring to the revolution, of course, and since then Iran is in prohibition, so a night club is a no-no, it's a boring restaurant now. But they built a giant hotel next door, and an amusement park with rollercoasters and a my little pony ripoff merry go round.
So it was a nice visit. I really hate travelling though. It's bad enough I have to suffer going there, then we had to travel all over the country while I was there. I'd much rather just chill with the family. Even if I can barely communicate with them, it's still nice. Language barrier's a bitch. And like, they speak 'Turkish' in Tabriz. So not the national language Farsi, so why should I bother learning that? But they actually speak a butchered version of Turkish that's closer to Azerbaijani, so learning straight Turkish is kind of a moot point as well. Sigh. Anyway, it's still nice, I'm just begging my dad not to take us anywhere next time. Crikey.
I got in and out without a problem though. Remember my passport issue? I'll be honest, it was really nerve wracking when the customs agent in Tabriz looked at and immediately stamped my dad's and my sisters' passports all in one go, and then just stared at mine for like 5 minutes, and then kept talking to my dad, and of course I couldn't understand a word. And I was like omg. But all was well. But then I had to go through that again on the way out. Fuck that sucked. It's like, I get it, dude's explaining how that stamp on my passport works. But like. Couldn't he stamp the fucking thing first and THEN talk? Or at least crack a smile or something, cuz he looked like he was about to pull out the red stamp, you know?
Also, if you have any questions about what it's like over there, please ask.
Oh yeah, now I remember why I kept putting off writing this blog post. Legit took me about 4 hours to upload all the photos and type all this drivel. fml
Hopefully I'll get to writing soon. I actually wanted to do some tonight after writing this blog, but uh... it's 3am.
Anyway, I'm going to BronyCon as per usual. I'll be the wanker in the Celestia suit, as per usual. Mostly be around Quills and Sofas. I'll try to make the bar crawl on Thursday, but I'll probably be too late like every year. I am dragging Cold Spike along for the ride this time, and with any luck MerlosTheMad will join us as well.
Here's a picture of a pony:
4631351 My family does well, but actually, most everyone over there seem comfortable. A good indicator is how many people in a country own cars. Like in India, everyone has a scooter or motorcycle, the roads are filled with them. In china, like 10 years ago, everyone had bicycles, now they have Buicks. In Iran, everyone has a car. I only saw like 5 motorcycles in the city.
Also, the city has construction everywhere, so the economy seems decent.