Hi! Welcome to my blog – Traveling-Steps, and welcome to my first blog post!

I thought for the first post I’d tell you a little about my journey ahead and what I hope to accomplish during my travels and through this blog. To learn more about me, check out the About tab in the menu.

Budapest, Hungary 2011

My passions for travel, dance and music merged for the first time about 4 years ago on a solo trip to Hungary, Romania and Turkey. Having recently found a new love for folkloric styles of dance and Romani culture, I decided that the focus of this trip would be on music and dance. I spent my days and evenings listening to live music, watching traditional dance shows and lingering on the streets to take in the street musicians. In Istanbul, I arranged to take Turkish Roman lessons with Reyhan Tuzsuz which was something I had never done before. The trip left me invigorated and wanting more! How great would it be to travel the world and experience each place, each culture, through it’s music and dance?

Fes, Morocco 2015

So here I am, after four long years of planning and saving, sitting in an apartment in Fes, Morocco doing just that. And although I spent four years planning, the beauty is I have no real plans. I have a list of countries I’d like to visit and I know how long I can stay in each and whether I need a visa or not. I expect this list will change as I continue to travel. Since most of my interests and experience lie in North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey and Eastern Europe, I’m going there first to build on the knowledge I already have. I want to move slowly, staying in places for at least a month at a time. I have no real contacts for dancing or singing in most of the places I want to visit, the idea is to go and see what I can find. I want to be surprised, I want to find things I hadn’t expected. I don’t have much money so I can’t always take private lessons from whomever may be the obvious choice in any location. I’ll need to learn from the people, make friends, ask questions and talk about what I’m doing. As a bit of an introvert, this could be a little scary for me but I’m up for the challenge and I have some ideas about how to break the ice. After just a month is Fes, I’m finding that people are more than happy to show you a little dance or sing you a song.

This blog will be about my experiences, perceptions and interpretations. In some case I’m trying to gain a certain level of competency in things I’ve already spend years learning like Moroccan dance or singing Muwashahat, so that I can teach others or perform. In other cases, I’m enjoying what the culture has to offer and sharing with you. My hope is that this site can grow into a community for dancers, musicians and travelers who want to learn from one another and learn about other cultures and traditions. I hope that you’ll also share your own experiences with me and the community.