Diving Into Different Cultures - Austria visits our Turkish Partners

A small Austrian team - Beate Hittinger and Martin Frischauf - both with their partners - took the topic of our project seriously and visited their partners in Sanliurfa during the Easter Holidays.



And that visit was a real highlight of the project!

Knowing Turkey from various visits we were aware, that this part of Turkey would be a very special one.

Far away from the touristic summer clubs along the Mediterrenian coast, Sanliurfa offered not only fascinating history but also friendly and open minded people!

It is hard to to present this intensive visit in only y few pictures, but we will try!
















Visiting Sanliurfa, Balikli Gol

With a lot of special fish, which you can feed - but you are not allowed to catch them ;-)

The story goes that burning coal was turned into fish....

Not far from that place is the cave, where Prophet Abrahams was born...













A view from the castle showing the Mevlid Halil mosque...
















The market places are very mysthic and rich in agricultural products from the area.

Many children have to work here in their spare time to earn some extra money for their families...











...Market









scenes...






































Monday we visited Ismetpasa School.

It was incredible, how exciting this was!

We made a little presentation about Austria,
















...taught the children how to peck Easter Eggs,

















exchanged presents,
















saw a nice dancing show...


















In a way we felt like holywood stars, because the children
didn´t want us to leave their school and ran after the cars...

















Left Sanliurfa to visit a sunken city...








































Were shown around in an area with incredible history...

Houses with natural air condition...








































The oldest university of the world - Harran

















Recently discovered monoliths - incredible 11500 years old...

Göbekli Tepe















Were invited to Mustafa´s little village - KARA KECI
















...visited the small school - one class































Were invited in Mustafa´s house to a fantastic Kurdish meal...
















Saying good bye to Mustafas family...













What a pity, that our other project partners did not take the chance to join the visit!!

Easter Traditions in Austria - Ratches

Going with RATCHETS is an old tradition in the HOLY WEEK.
It is an oral tradition, that the church bells fly from Holy Thursday till Easter Sunday to ROME, Italy. So the bells don´t ring....

The children walk with their noisy ratches through the villages. This noise should remind the people of the Holy Service (usually the church bells do) and the suffering of Jesus Christ.

Starting Holy Thursday evening the Ratching ends on Saturday.
Sunday the church bells are back and ring again!

Girls were allowed to take part in this procession only some years ago...

The children collect money and sweets from the houses they visit.

But they have to recite a little saying:

Wir ratschen, wir ratschen den englischen Gruß, den jeder katholische Christ beten muss...

And here are some of these noisy instruments:

Wheel ratchet

Hand ratchet




GLÖCKEL

World Record in Eierpecking???

All the pupils of ASO Steinabrückl took part in a big
"Eierpecking" contest!

















Katrin vs Simon














Thomas vs Mario















Milan vs Michi















Milan vs Jan
















Katrin vs Milan

And here is the final after a hard elimination peck out:

Easter Traditions in Austria - Searching Easter Nests

Searching Easter Nests is a nice tradition in Austria.

Parents, grandparents hide little nests with colored Easter eggs and sweets
somewhere in flats or out in nature for their little children.

But in a way it seems, that these traditions become nowadays more and more unknown to our children.

Therefore we try to save these nice habits by practising them in school.

Here are some impressions:




























Jan finds his nest under a seat bench together with TILY.













You know, that the Easter rabbit lays his colored
eggs in a nest on a tree! ;-))

MICHI was proud!

















This year Easter is very late with green grass and nice temperatures.
But we remember also Easter with snow when whe had to hide nests outside...

Michelle, our youngest, found also a nest!



















Happy EASTER!!!

Showing TILY how to bake an Easter Striezel

Hey kids, we want to show you how to bake an Easter Cake!

But Tily, this time you have to be carful not to disappear in the dough!


OK, this time I will be very cautious, I promise!














To prepare the dough you need

• milk
• butter
  
• flour
• yeast
• eggs
• salt

You mix the ingredients and let the dough rest for some minutes!



Then you split the dough into four parts.

















Now you cou can start to braid the cake.





We can show that in a video!!!




Bake it at 180° for 40 minutes!


Tily and Steini are very proud!