February 9, 2015
As usual I’m nervous and I don’t want to go anymore.
It often happens, a few days before departure: I realize how comfortable I am at home, with my routine and my cats, and now that winter is almost over and days are warmer and sunnier, there are a lot of places around here that I could visit and many events to take part to, etc.
But as soon as I will be on the plane and it will be too late to change my mind and the liberating headache will take over, I’ll be shot into the “discovery” version of myself and I will look forward to the long walks and pictures and writing.
What scares me a bit at the moment is:
- The picture for the visa that I will get at the airport, is it ok if my hair is visible or should I cover it with a scarf? Meridiani says that I need the scarf, the consulate doesn’t. To be safe I should take another picture with a scarf; I’ll do it if I have time.
- The hotel in Tehran hasn’t been confirmed yet. Usually I wouldn’t mind too much, but I need the hotel voucher to get the visa.
- Will I be dressed adequately? I have long chemisiers, a scarf to cover my head and I like it, but will it be good enough?
- Is the rough plan good or have I planned too many stops? Only in Isfahan and Shiraz we are staying 2 or 3 nights, in other destinations we’ll arrive at about midday, we’ll go to the hotel to drop the bags, go visiting and the next morning we’ll leave. We’ll be back to Italy super tired… but happy! (I hope). Maybe we should skip one place or two and spend more time in the others. I don’t like to rush. But this time we don’t have much time…
- Will I have enough time to pack my bags tomorrow or should I start now?
- On my boarding pass there’s a nice “M” for male near my name: did I do something wrong while booking or was it the website fault? I was very careful during the booking, m/f and date of birth, but it is true that I was doing many bookings at the same time on various sites and I might have missed something. Will it be a problem at boarding?
- What am I forgetting? Because it’s not “if”. Something I’m going to forget for sure. When we went to the Dominican Republic I forgot my notebook battery. Will they let me take the notebook with me this time or will they assume I’m a journalist hence send me back home with the notebook?
In three days I’ll be in Tehran. In the worst case scenario, if anything went wrong, if they send us back, we can still stop in Istanbul, which wouldn’t be a bad place neither…
Updates: a few minutes after I published this, my friend Paola, that works for an airline, told me that the pictue is ok without scarf and for my new gender there is no problem, they’ll board me nonetheless. Good!!
