In between the countries....
On the other side of the border, money-mosquitoes were already waiting for us in order to give the worst exchange rate as possible. Fortunately there were so many of them and the competition between them allowed us to change first 5 euros more or less farely. And the most ironical was that our illegal money exchange deal took place in official bank office in front of the eyes of the bank worker.
We got a lift to Maku by a iranian, who works in Turkey, so he more or less knew what hh-ing means. Later on we realized that hh-ing does not really work in Iran, because most people that stop for you are taxis drivers, who consider tourists as cash machines.
Wandering on the streets of Maku were totally different from wandering on streets of any of the Turkish city. People stared at as as we were aliens. No smiles, few shy greetings and mostly only replies to our greetings. But then again, it was mostly only a kurdish city somewhere on the corner of Iran and as we found out later - very different from the rest of Iran.
It was already getting dark, so we got a hotel room on the main street of Maku. No shower, awfully looking and smelling toilet and a room with three beds and cealing covered with a cloth, where was possible to see - in the case of a good imagination - a shape of a hand under the cealing..... Like in the horror movie " Hostel ". The shift from Turkish environment to Iranian environment was so strong, that we were actually still in Tureky in our minds.
Next day after changing money in the bank, we immediately became millionaires.
And decided to move on to Tabriz.
When arriving to the bus station, we were suddenly under the attack of bus-mosquitoes. They are some sort of middle-men for bus companies, but give you not official but higher price.
We broke through from the mosquite swarm and headed to the ticket office. The bus to Tabriz costed 1500 tomans (1 euro). As typical tourists in a new country, we were thinking that everybody wants to cheat us, so we tried to get the price even more cheaper. Suddenly the middle-man of this company came into the room. He looked like a mafia boss, with leather jacket and big moustache. With him also the price went up, 2000 tomans now. After our protest and will to pay 1500 tomans for the ticket, he said to us arrogantly "no, thank you! Good bye!" and insisted us to leave. The official ticket seller did not even raise his eyes from his documents.
Illegal money exchange in the bank and illegal bus ticket in the bus company office - that was how Iran seamed to us in the first day.
After little waiting, when the middle-man had left, the price went back to 1500 tomans. So we bought the tickets and were happy to arrive to Tabriz soon - to real Iran.
Our bus just 5 min before departure time :-)
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