The owner of the hotel spoke little English but with the help of a phrase book I managed to explain we needed a garage for Helen‘s bike to fix the water pump. I was trying to ask for a space to work but I think the closest we got was to organise the mechanic to call out.
When he came I was a little confused because the guy had clean hands and clothes which is not typical of any mechanic I‘ve ever met. Some younger people passing in the street were accosted by the hotel guy who could do a little translation for us. I explained that I just needed somewhere to work. What I got was a dusty carpark. It got pretty frustrating with the carpark owner and all the people parking their cars coming over to leer or ask the usual “where you from“ questions. I gave up after cleaning the water pump cover and just topped up the water instead. I was less than happy about the prospect of continuing with the dodgy pump but didn’t like the thought of stripping it there and getting grit etc into it.
To add further stress a guy came and told us we needed to move the bikes because the police would give us a ticket otherwise. He showed us an underground car park where we could leave them but we were not happy with them being quite a distance away. I was tempted to leave them there because any ticket we got would go unpaid anyway but the thought that perhaps the bikes would be impounded didn’t appeal to us.
The only option was to move to Hotel Sepia up the road with underground parking (but more than twice as expensive). We both got frustrated with zombie onlookers while packing and one of them set off the alarm. This made me snap and I shouted at them to the effect “go away“ (only less polite). There was no reaction from them to rise to it and I felt bad about it later. Here we were as total strangers so it was natural to be a curiosity and we had been treated with kindness since we came into Iran and shouting was my reaction.
In the move Helen managed to lose her phone. We went back and searched first hotel before eventually finding it in Helens bag. We went back to the first hotel again to explain and had tea and chatted for a while which made me feel a little better.
In the morning we left for Qazvin.