When I graduated from Cal in 1967 I decided I wanted to see some of the world, and in September I flew on a special student charter from Oakland to London.  I think it cost about $120. The next day I took a ferry to France and hitchhiked down to Munich for the Oktoberfest. I met some Englishmen there, drinking beer at the Hofbrauhaus, and they told me about a trip they were going to take to Tehran. It was a caravan of used Mercedes that some Iranian smugglers were shipping there by road.  If you drove one of these cars from Munich to Tehran you could make $100, plus a bus ticket back to Istanbul or on to Kabul, Afghanistan. They said these Iranians were just businessmen avoiding import duties. I would be the registered owner of my Mercedes, and once in Tehran I'd transfer title to an Iranian. It all made a certain amount of sense, and after asking about it at the American embassy I decided to go.  There seven cars in all, and we drove...(Read Full Post)