Hi everyone! 

I am Adika, an exchange student from Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is located in southwestern Asia with the Great Caucasus Mountains to the North. To be in Remagen and write a blog about one of my favorite holidays is really a great pleasure for me.  In my blog, I want to tell you about Azerbaijan New Year which is also called the “Novruz Holiday”.

In Azerbaijan, we are celebrating two New Years Holidays. One which is common for most of the countries in the world on 31st of December and another one is Novruz Holiday. Novruz Holiday also represents the coming of spring on 20/21 of March. For most of the time, preparation for Novruz begins a month before the festival. Novruz's origins can be traced back to ancient practices and rituals associated with magic, nature cults, and fertility, as well as beliefs in the decline and rise of nature. Each Tuesday people celebrate the day of one of the four elements – water, fire, earth, and wind, with the last one, "Akhri Charshamba," symbolizing the time when the leaves bud out and spring finally arrives. On the first Charshanbe, it is said that still waters begin to move and the water is renewed. Bonfires are lit on the second Charshanbe. There are various beliefs, art, and traditions associated with each of these days.  People clean their house, plant new trees, buy new dresses, paint eggs,  make national pastries such as shekerbura, pakhlava, shor gogal. Shor Gogal Symbolizes the Sun, Shekerbura represents the Moon and Pakhlava is the symbol of Stars. In addition to these pastries, the table is always full of other varieties of national cuisines.

During holidays all the families gather at home and celebrate together this holiday. There are so many traditions which we are doing during the Novruz holiday. For example, the people don’t lock their houses and it symbolizes the hospitality of the host.  In order to get out of you all the bad things which happened during the year, people jump over the fire seven times. Also, children put a  hat in front of their neighbor’s doors then they knock on the door and run. The next step is that the host takes this hat, puts some pastries in it, and again puts it in front of the door. The main point is that the person who placed a hat in front of the door should not be seen.

For the first time celebrating Novruz Holiday abroad, I think we did our best with Fatma Abbaszade who is also an exchange student at RheinAhrCampus. In the beginning, we thought that maybe we can’t find some products which we will need, but thankfully at supermarkets in Remagen and Turkish stores, we found everything.  As you see from the photo, we celebrated it with different people from Morocco, Syria, and Georgia. After we ate our traditional dishes, in the evening we made a fortune-telling ring and egg beating as the tradition of this holiday. Discussing cultures of different nationalities, their holidays, and spending time together was what we had a memory from this Novruz Holiday.