My love from Iran

In a few hours I'm going to pick up the parents of my girl-friend from the airport.
My girl-friend is originally from Iran. She came to Austria when she was 18 years old. She came here alone, learnt German for one year, and then studied Information Technologies. I think that was a very hard and brave action. And it must have been some kind of a culture shock.

Today, after so many years, it is the first time that her parents come to Austria.
It was not so easy to invite them. I did not know about it, but it is quite difficult here in Austria to invite people from certain other countries, so that they are allowed to see Austria for a while. Actually the austrian embassy in Iran has to give the allowance to visitors, but they said no to the parents for my girl-friend. As I heard, the current people in the embassy suck a lot, so we thought we would have no chance, but my girl-friend called the Austrian ministry of foreign affairs and started to make a complaint. Suddenly, on the next day, the embassy called my girl-friend's parents and told them that they may go to Austria. So much about making complaints, sometimes they help.

For me my life changed very much because of my girl-friend. She is from another culture, and she sees many things in a different way than I do. And I learnt a lot about Iran.

Some time ago, I had thought that most people in Iran were muslims and convinced of their religion and some kind of fanatic. Then I was invited by so many iranian people living here in Austria, so that I had the chance to learn more.
First of all there seem to be two worlds in Iran: the official one of the government and the islam, and then the private one. One can see it on the photos. When women are walking on the streets, they have headscarfs, when they are in the house, maybe on a party, they have no headscarfs, but miniskirts. It's the opposite, very closed in the public, very open in the private area, somehow. In the beginning it confused me.

People from Iran are very hospitable, and they love their country, they are proud of it. I have the feeling, that it is sometimes difficult to find things where they can be proud of. They often talk about history, and how powerful Persia once was. But now it is not anymore.
And they seem not to like Turkish or Arabian people...

Iran nowadays is a lost country. It has a regime which surpresses the intelligent people of the country, so that more and more of them leave the country. And most of the people are very poor, and I read, that 70% of the people are younger than 30 years old.
This last fact gives me some hope. The young people like the Internet, they like Twitter, and so on. They are open-minded and curious to learn new things. Maybe there is a chance that they will change their regime some day.

We have to hope for this, because the Iran could be a wonderful country to live with a lot of great people.