3rd of August – The welcoming nature of immigration

The flight to Iran went as planned and there were no real issues to speak of. We left Copenhagen around 1110 and to my surprise there were many more at the airport than I had expected for a Thursday morning. I met some of my fellow travellers in the check-in queue and at the gate and check-in was probably the slowest I have ever seen in CPH; almost 45 minutes’ wait with only 20-ish ahead of me and several booths open – damn IT systems not working as intended. The layover was spent grabbing samples of Turkish delights and relaxing in a café. The flight to Tehran was on time and we arrived as scheduled at 0120 local time.

The travel agency had sorted out visas for us and had in return sent us visa grants and as we had been told nothing else we entered the immigration queue like everyone else. After spending too long moving almost nowhere the first of us reached the single desk and was promptly referred to a different desk that apparently was supposed to convert our visa grants to “real” visas. From here we entered an absurd circus. First they wanted us to buy visas because they didn’t want to acknowledge the official visa grants we presented to them and couldn’t show the necessary documentation that we had paid for them already (though they never explained WHAT the necessary documentation was), then they wanted us to buy travel insurance as we couldn’t show satisfactory documentation that we had insurance (again; they couldn’t (wouldn’t?) explain what kind of proof they wanted), then they wanted to see travel documents but yes, you guessed it; they couldn’t explain what kind of documents they were referring to. Nothing we showed them was apparently correct. All this time it was a single man walking between the different visa/insurance booths running us around in circles.

We then stepped aside, called our tour guide (who had arrived a bit before us) who we couldn’t get hold of him so we called the travel agency’s emergency number and got hold of someone who promised he would figure things out. And then we waited with occasional updates from the emergency contact. He had finally gotten hold of our guide and local contact on the other side and the latter had been talking with the immigration office. After a while this resulted in Mr. Bureaucracy suddenly showing up with a list with all our names, taking our passports and grants and returning them a few minutes later with proper visas. Success!

We went through immigration without a single issue, grabbed out bags and finally left the airport. The entire ordeal lasted near 3 hours and most of it was just annoying waiting.

Arrived at the hotel around 0500, checked in, had a very short briefing and planned to meet for a more expansive one at 1200. Sleep time!