EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 12,260
There are lots of burrito places and inspecific-Middle Eastern, falafel-and-kebab places around here, but that's about it. Nothing against burritos and falafel, btw, I love both, but for a real dinner, you're kind of SOL. And whenever I go into a restaurant that isn't embedded in its community, I can't help but wonder if it's been adapted for what the chef thinks is the American palate. Obviously, that could still happen in a city with a large diaspora community, but if there are Persians eating at a Persian restaurant, at least I know the locals don't avoid the place.Life without Mexican food is like life without pizza.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
That is to say: goodLife without Mexican food is like life without pizza.
I went to university with a fellow from Iran. He and his family were an absolute delight. In fact, I can't think of any Iranian that I have met in Canada who wasn't a hard-working decent person.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Iran looks like a beautiful country and the Iranian people seem for the most part awesome. I want to go there one day to hike their trails and eat their food.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Well, their government does consider Israel and America as their two primary enemies. (KSA, gets third place)
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
There's been a scandal here in snoreway the last week or so because the I think inegration/imigration/whateverminister (previously fisheryminister) went there on vacation last week
Well even if there is a deal with Iran in the future, they'll probably assume I'm a Mossad agent if I travel there under an American passport. I have to wait until the fall of the regime.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I personally think that the original thread question is vaguely silly and that the things people are saying about the individual Iranians they know speaks a lot to the whole way people approach other national identities in this day and age! I don't much like it.
However, I do like the opportunity to talk, so, off the back of the quoted post: here is a story about travel and intelligence officers.
An American gentleman I know took a Baltic cruise with his wife a couple-three years back, and one of the stops was in Sankt Petersburg. The gentleman had visited Russia many times for business purposes in the past three-odd decades, almost always as a contractor executing a US government task order in connection with the Russian government. As a contractor, he had also visited many places in the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, and East/Southeast Asia. He was a very well-traveled gentleman, with many varied stamps in his passport.
St. Petersburg was an excellent addition to the passport, as I understand it. He and his wife visited many of the traditional tourist destinations in and around the city over the two days they were there. I believe she was particularly interested in the Church of the Blood; he enjoyed the sights, but primarily focused on geocaching. Anyway, they had a good time. After the first day, they went back, slept on board ship, and returned to the city the next morning to continue their adventures.
Normally, cruise lines work out customs arrangements with the countries their ships visit, so that they can have the guests effectively transit customs by proxy: the line forwards their passport information to the host country, and the host country agrees to waive standard customs procedures and allow the cruise line's own security staff to stand in for customs officials. The Russian Federation is not a country that allows this practice. The first day, the gentleman and his wife had to return through customs to get back to the ship. They had no difficulty in doing so.
On the second day, they did run into difficulties.
The Russian customs official who reviewed the gentleman's papers noticed all of the stamps in his passport from faraway and exotic places. Liechtenstein? Ouagadougou? Ho Chi Minh City? Kabul? She inquired about these places in excellent English, and asked why an American tourist had visited them. He informed her that he was a government contractor, but that at that moment he was on vacation, spending money in St. Petersburg and the other fine cities around the rim of the Baltic. She inquired about his Krasnoyarsk passport stamp. Surely no tourist would visit that place voluntarily. That, too, he informed her, was for a contracting job.
By this time, of course, the gentleman's wife - who, not being a
Their customs official, however, was making quite a big show out of the American intelligence officer she'd "caught", and had called in other customs officials to "review the gentleman's papers". To deepen the gentleman's plight, he was, in fact, a retired officer in the US military, which is not the sort of thing one reveals when one is being questioned, however seriously, on suspicion of being a foreign intelligence officer. Our hero was familiar with customs officials screwing around, and believed he was in no serious danger of being formally detained, but admitted that he wouldn't have put money on it at the time; this is sort of a Thing That Customs Officials Do, regardless of country of origin. His Russian was fragmentary and not good enough to determine the nature of their conversation, so the issue hung in doubt for many long minutes.
Finally, the Russians let him go, and he hustled to the ship a few minutes before scheduled departure.
He has been back since, several times, and has not once encountered a similar difficulty.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I think of them as our natural allies in the Middle East.... sigh
That's a cool story, but I almost certainly wouldn't be let in based on my having Israeli citizenship at all (and probably held hostage/presented to the public as a spy).
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British tour companies run holidays there. Your visa application won't be approved if you've even been to Israel never mind having Israeli citizenship. Not sure about US.
I have a friend who has dual UK/Iranian citizenship but he has never been to Iran since Iran doesn't recognise dual citizenship.
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
Yes, you send in your old passport when renewing it. When your new one arrives you also get your old one back with hole(s) in it.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
I got a stamp in my passport at "The End of the World", at the southern terminus of the Pan-American highway, in Tierra del Fuego. It's sort of something you seek out when you're in those parts, to find the hut with the stamp guy you have to take a bus or a train into a park. We happened to be there on a hiking trip, and we stumbled upon the hut, so why not? The only other "novelty" stamp in any of my passports was at Machu Picchu. There was plenty of room in my passport at the time, so why not? It's a cool memory, 20 years from now I'll look through my passports and will remember all these trips and all that jazz. I agree that getting a novelty stamp at every place you go is probably overkill. I prefer to leave room in my passports for legally required stamps and all that.
I hold on to all my old passports and keep them around. You don't even need to mail your old passport in, here in Canada, or at least I never did.
I hold on to all my old passports and keep them around. You don't even need to mail your old passport in, here in Canada, or at least I never did.
I was in high school when the hostage-taking event happened. While I find the history of millennia ago fascinating, the last 40 years is not what I would call fascinating, given all the horror stories of innocent people being imprisoned, tortured, executed, etc.
I would miss pizza very much. Mexican food... meh. Unless it's a taco pizza. Those are really good.Life without Mexican food is like life without pizza.
