In the 1.5 weeks we spent in Tehran, a city with a population of more than 8 million, we hardly saw any graffitis or stencils. The city is dominated by Islamic Republic propaganda. We did see and photograph three stencils, however, and saw one beautification project, that, really, is beautiful.

When I was passing through Tehran on the way to a photo assignment in 2014, I was immediately fascinated (in a morbid way) by the thousands of murals I saw throughout the city. I thought that their faded palette and childlike quality added color and life to the cityscape (and by “life,” I really mean “death,” since most of the depicted are dead soldiers from the Iran-Iraq war or Ayatollahs long gone.)

Shiva, our lovely new Iranian-German friend, made our Iran trip so incredibly interesting that I need to dedicate a post to her and her alone. She was seated next to me on our Vienna-Tehran flight and we immediately hit it off. We talked throughout take-off and dinner and exchanged phone numbers. Shiva was on her way to Tehran to see her boyfriend and invited us to hang out with them.

Let's kick off this series about our Iran adventures with something easy and pleasurable: Traveling by train all across the Islamic Republic! As you might know, I am a freak when it comes to trains (I will almost always prefer them to any other means of transport), and that's why I went a bit overboard with photos in this post. Please bear with me!

After three weeks in Iran, I’m so happy and relieved to be back in Europe! We had an interesting, exotic, and often exciting and wonderful time. We felt very welcome by the Iranian people and their famous hospitality, but, as time went by, deeply unrelaxed about traveling in a dictatorial theocratic regime.