Day 94 What’s on TV?

SYNOPSIS:  A four hour bus ride put me back in time; it’s spring in Ardabil.  It was rainy today and early enough in the day, so I was flipping channels on Iranian TV instead of doing anything productive.  From badly acted soap operas to boring mullah talk shows.Four hours on the bus going East today put me back a full season.  I had much enjoyed the spring weather in Tabriz.  Getting away from the hot summer temperatures was a relief.  But I had not expected that four hours on the bus going east would put me back almost at the end of winter.  Fruit trees are blooming, but most of the trees are barely budding in Ardabil.  It’s about 6 to 10 degrees Celsius (55 to 60 Fahrenheit) and I had to get out my long underwear and the coat again.  It just goes to show how vast and varied this country is.   Amazing.I settled into my hotel – the Lonely Planet listed the hotel as being gutted.  That seemed to be a good sign since that was two years ago.  Indeed, the place is now fully renovated with pleasant indirect light, the softest pillows I have had anywhere in Iran and real blankets.  Light, fake wooden furniture gives it a friendly, modern, almost European-Ikea feel.  There is a coffee bar and a computer for guest’s to use.  But not a single word of English is spoken.  I already think that I am in the middle of a big miscommunication fiasco over the price of my room.  I will find out in two days when I leave… For now, I will just enjoy this friendly environment.  I strolled for a while through the covered bazaar and made a round through the center of town to get my bearings.  Tomorrow, I will check out the local sights.  Nothing much happened.  I turned down the invitation of three middle-aged Iranian men to join them for dinner.  I ran into them outside a restaurant the LP had highly recommended.  It had closed for good.  So much change in just two years.Since there was nothing much else to do and since it was still early, I turned on the TV to see what’s up on the government approved networks.  I have been flipping channels for about three hours by now and have that bad taste of wasted time in my mouth.  I have 8 channels.  At 8:15 PM, about five of them were sending out prayers; it must have been that time of the day.   By now, 10:45 PM, only one of them seems to keep going with prayers and religious readings.  But two other channels are still clearly concerned with religious matters.  In one of them, a round table discussion is going on – the authority at the table is the mullah with his white turban and the brown overcoat – an easy way to distinguish the mullahs, or learned religious clerics, in public.  On the other channel, an older man is interviewing a chador-clad woman.  They could be talking about anything, but I am taking the visual clue of a golden dome of a mosque in the background as an indication for the content of the talk.One of the channels is broadcasting ongoing news.   However, I am not getting much of a sense of world news.  The focus seems to be Iran:  Interviews with truck drivers, field workers, reports from a car factory, reporters in a crowd, scientists and their achievements, important looking people are talking, and Ahmadinejad speaks in front of a cheering crowd and so on.  I realize that in the nearly four months of travel I never had the time to linger at the internet to look for world news.  I am as clueless as can be.   I wonder what all is happening “out there”.There is the documentary channel.  I watched a program for a while on suspension bridges. All in Farsi, but I got the visuals.  And then, low and behold, an program in English about wildlife preservation.And there is the sports channel.  People are simply addicted to football (soccer) around here and it is amazing how many Iranians on the street can list, numerous German soccer teams and the names of the most famous athletes.  If I were French, I am sure they would rattle off the French teams.  Sport has always captured the masses.  The Romans had already figured that out and provided free games for the entertainment of their not so happy population to keep them off the streets.  It seems to work here, too.Ah, and one of the other channels now is sending out a science show – judging from the astrolabe they are using as their backdrop.  Lots of talk though, not enough visual clues for me to follow; too bad.   More documentaries are running on bugs and an old village.But I am sure most watched – aside from the sports channel – are the badly acted hour long soap operas on the next channel.  Exaggerated characters – the strict mother, the powerless father, the grumpy grandpa, the plotting children, the shrill-voiced aunt, the dorky uncle, good guys and bad – you get the picture; just mind-numbing dumb stuff.  But wait – this is interesting – the show just was interrupted by a commercial!  I guess, this is a good example of the bad influence American practices have on the life of Iranian people.On channel eight there are still the readings from the Koran, overlaid by pictures of mosque architecture, beautiful nature photography, calligraphy, and praying people.  I guess, that channel does not change its program.  In one of the sections, a Persian miniature was animated, illustrating a battle from the Koran.  That was cool!   But even the religious channel had a commercial about drinking tea, about mobile phones, and about another TV show!  Why is it that the worst of our culture has to spread this way?Since I did not take any pictures today, I looked for some of the door images I have been taking all along.  I am fascinated by these old (and some new) doors everywhere.  They have such character.And no more TV for me for a while!  It’s as much a waste here as it is at home.Good night.