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Monday 2004-05-24 - Tabriz, Iran
The ladies are having fun!
We’re getting our first culture shock tonight. Since the hotel is some way outside the center of Tabriz, all twelve of us take the city bus into town to find dinner there: the bus stop is right in front of the hotel. When I tell our guide Showān that we’re going into town by bus, he’s really shocked: We can’t just do that, we might get lost, and he’s responsible for us! Well, I explain, we can just do that, we do it all the time; and we’re responsible for ourselves. When we leave, he can’t stop us, of course — but he looks decidedly unhappy.
We find that in the city buses men and women are strictly separated: women ride in the back. (There’s no such separation on long-distance busses, by the way.) The result is surprisingly positive for us ladies: we immediately have contact, many especially younger women speak some English and start chatting with us, all the while translating for the older ones. The atmosphere is a cozy one of women among each other. Also watching women in other city buses, we observe the same, we’re not just lucky in our bus: they’re chatting and laughing together — in the men’s section there’s no such atmosphere. It’s fun to ride in the back of the bus!
