Mr. Ali’s Place

I have never done so much flying in such a short amount of time in my life.  The past 2 weeks I flew 4 times and the next few weeks I will be flying in an airplane about 7 more times.  I am currently in Iran’s capital city Tehran for a few days.  The weather is great here because of what seems like a constant light breeze that is keeping the city cool.  Yesterday around noon I went to a family gathering that had about 80-90 or so people from my dads side.  It was a lot of fun and I got a chance to meet and hang out with cousins and other family.

Last night we got some pizza from a local pizza place near my dads house.  It was good but one strange custom they have here is they always serve pizza with ketchup.  I have no idea what other country does this because someone must have came to Iran to show the people here they ways of making a pizza and happen to mention to hand out ketchup packets with pizza.  This act of pizza sabotage has to stop.  I can understand ranch packets being handed out, just not ketchup.  Anyone care to shed some light on the origins of this?  Its not really a big deal, its just a little different.

Now lets take a moment to talk about the cars here in Iran.  In Iran it is insanely expensive to import a car.  It usually comes out costing twice whatever the car costs because of taxes and import fees.  That being said most of the cars are Peugeot (French car company), Citroen and Paykan (no longer made but Iran has a lot of these cars).  You do see the occasional car that is not of of those three.  For example yesterday i saw the new BMW M5 parked outside someones home.  That car already costs about $80,000 in the states, god knows how much it costs the owner to import it, let alone the cost of the car.  That is probably the only car of that kind in all of Iran.  In Kish Islands the cars are  a little different.  You really do not see many Peugeot’s in Kish.  You mostly see Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and some Honda’s.  Most of the Taxi cabs are Toyota Camery’s with a lot of them being the new 2007 models.

Thats all for now, I will report back in 4 or 5 days.

Filed under: Current trip to Iran