Human Oscar Statues and Flying Carpets

If Iran ever needs to reinvent itself as a tourist destination I suggest they drop the Iran name and just go with their old name Persia. Doesn’t Persia give you exotic mental images of belly dancers, Aladdin lamps, and flying carpets? It does to me! The Iran name gives me all the wrong associations about violated human rights and it is not getting better the more I read. Even today’s Norwegian news reported that Iran’s ambassador in Norway was seeking asylum here. Why? He had resigned in protest against human rights violations and election scandals. This apparently didn’t go down well with some powerful people.

In an attempt to find something positive about Iran I started looking at photos from Iran on Flickr. A lot of beautiful photos, especially of fascinating buildings and patterns. I guess there is a reason why Iran’s second largest export is carpets.

There was one photo in particular that stuck out and I desperately want to visit this place.

And from Flickr I learned that Iranian bodybuilder don’t only seem to want to look muscular but also something that reminds me of the Oscar statue…

I also started looking for movies to watch. I figured that the visually stunning 300 wasn’t an accurate portrayal of Persians (though I almost got blinded dumb by all the abs in that movie) so I ordered another Iranian movie called Persepolis. Now I am just waiting for it to arrive. In the meantime I will work on the second half of the book I picked. So far not a great book but decent and gives a good insight into Iran (or so I think at least).