Rick Steves' Trip to Iran

Rick Steves, the famous world traveler, traveled to Iran in spring 2008 and made a one-hour documentary about Iran, which was broadcast on PBS in February. You can visit his website and buy his DVD on his web page about Iran at http://www.ricksteves.com/iran/. Below are some quotes from his website about Iran:

Even early in the trip, it's clear that the people of Iran are the biggest joy of our visit—everyone's mellow, quick to smile, and very courteous.

Routinely, I'll look up from my note-taking or memorizing my lines to see curious locals gathered, greeting me with smiles, and wanting to talk. When I explain where I'm from, the smiles get bigger. I have never traveled to a place where I had such an easy and enjoyable time connecting with people. Locals are as confused and fascinated by me as I am by them. Young, educated people speak English.

I can't help but think how tourism could boom here if they just opened this place up. There are a few Western tourists (mostly Germans, French, Brits, and Dutch), but they all seem to be on a tour, with a private guide, or visiting relatives. Control gets tighter and looser depending on the political climate, but basically American tourists can visit only with a guided tour. I've met no one just exploring on their own. The Lonely Planet guidebook dominates—it seems every Westerner here has one. Fortunately, it's good. Tourists are so rare, and major tourist sights are so few and obvious, that you bump into the same people day after day. Browsing through picture books and calendars showing the same 15 or 20 images of the top sights in Iran, I'm impressed by how our short trip will manage to include most of them.

While in Tehran, we're being zipped smoothly around by Majid, our driver. Majid navigates our eight-seater bus like a motor scooter, weaving in and out of traffic that flows down the street and between lanes like rocks in a landslide. To illustrate how clueless I am here, for three days I've been calling him "Najaf." And whenever a bit of filming goes well and we triumphantly return to the car, I give him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. But today, Majid patiently explained that I've been confusing his name with a city in Iraq...and that giving someone a thumbs-up in Iran is like giving them the finger.

"Death to traffic!"
While traffic is enough to make you scream, people are incredibly good-humored on the road. I never heard angry horns honking. While stalled in a Tehran jam, people in the neighboring car see me sitting patiently in the back of our van: a foreigner stuck in their traffic. They roll down their window and hand Majid a bouquet of flowers with instructions to give it to the visitor. When the traffic jam breaks up, we move on—with a bouquet from strangers on my lap.