I had that excited butterflies feeling in my stomach as soon as I booked our flights to Iran.  I didn’t know why I was so excited to visit a place I knew so little about.  However on this occasion my butterfly measure was proven true and Iran will go down one of the highlights of our trip.  Unlike other places I’ve visited it wasn’t the food (which was actually pretty horrible) or the mountains that made me love Iran. It was the people.  Never have I felt so genuinely welcomed by people as I did in Iran.  We were welcomed to Iran while walking to the train station, on the train, in a park, on the ski lift, in buses and just on the streets.  Hello!  What are you doing in Iran?  Where are you from?  Do you like Iran?  Do you want to drink tea with us?  Do you want to eat some of my lunch?  The questions were not aggressive or intrusive but came from a genuine interest and hospitality.  I also found I would enter into deeper conversations quickly with people about culture, religion and future hopes.  I left feeling overwhelming blessed that I had so many positive encounters and experiences in a country so different to my own.  After a nine day visit I’m not going to give my opinion on the middle east-there are enough uninformed people doing that already.  Instead I’ll leave you with a poetic sentiment from a young Iranian man who we chatted to briefly on the train about the differences in the landscape of Iran (a very mountainous country) and Australia (a very flat country):

“I wish the only differences between our countries were the sizes of our mountains.”

I wish this too.

 

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