Amol

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When I arrived in Tehran it was on a Friday. On a Friday there is not much going to happen in Iran. Everything is closed. Still I managed to change some money with an obscure person approaching me on the street. My plans where to go to mount Damavand in the Alborz mountains north of Tehran. It's the highest mountain of Iran (5671m) and I thought it should be a good training for the treking in Karakorum or Himalaya. So I went straight on from the western bus terminal to the eastern bus terminal in Tehran (which is not to difficult, just get the city bus along the street all the way east) and took the bus to Reine, a small village located at Damavand (2200m). Here I explored all the conditions for climbing Damavand, incuding the possible shelters, the entrance fee, the trail head and the weather. Besides it's altitude Damavand is not so difficult to climb. It is a perfectly cone shaped vulcano and the hiking trail going up is easy to find and to follow. But I still needed a partner. With a partner it is more save and more fun. So I just stayed one night with one of the local guides (he cooked me some good food, first real iranian food I had) and took a bus to Amol near the Caspian Sea to write an Email to Nick, my climbing partner in spe, who still kept hanging around in Turkey that time.
But this was not an easy task: I didn't have any guide book entry for Amol, everything only in Persian language, nobody speaking english, not so easy to find a place for the night and an internet connection. So I walked down the main road in Amol trying to find what I was lokking for. Finally I went into a book shop, where the owners (two young guys, Kazem, 22y, Amir 26y) spoke some english. They were very helpful and started to search the streets of Amol together with me for a cheap hotel. We could not really find one and finnal Kazem asked me, if I wanted to sleep in his book shop. I was already satisfied leaving my backpack there while visiting the 'Cafe Net' he had shown me. When I came back they invited me to sleep at their home for one night and to have lunch and dinner with them, I should be their guest. Very nice! We went for a good Abgusht (Very comon iranian meal, Ab - Water, Gusht - Meat -> Watermeat) and they teached me how to eat this. Basically you get a jar-like pot with some beans, some potato and some meat. The whole thing is very hot and boiling in its own soup. For eating you get another bowl, knife, fork and a masher. First you have to use the accompanying bread as a pot cloth to pour of the soup into the bowl. Then you fill the soup in the bowl with pieces of bread until everything is soaked up. This is the first course. For the second course you seperate the meat from any bones and mash it together with the potato and the beans. If you like you can ad onion and lemon. Small portions of the mashed thing are rolled into pieces of bread. It's very delicious, especially when you've had only sandwich and other street food for some time.
In the evening Kazem, Amir and me went to a small two-room building next to a greenery outside of Amol. This is th place Amir and Kazem are living when they work in Amol, there families living in different cities. Here they cooked another meal for me, something with fried potatos and tomato, also very good.
I enjoyed the time with them very much, they where very curious about Germany and they plan to come to Germany for a short visit maybe next summer.

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