I got terribly ill in Berlin, but somehow it turned out to be a fantastic lesson of letting go or surrendering to what is. For five days I laid in bed, while the mysteries of Big Bad Berlin passed me by, it was lovely... just to let go and relax into being. There may be more pressing concerns, once in a lifetime opportunities, but you just accept the message of the moment, the perfection of letting the illusions, the shoulds pass you by; like a Zen tap that always seems to wake the spirit. Yet somehow in this lesson, a major transition occurred. The honeymoon phase of my journey had definitively ended. No longer was I living and thriving from each new experience. An undercurrent of exhaustion swooshed within me and I lacked the emotional energy/space to put my new experiences. I was also overdosed on dance classes. The Jams in Berlin were crowded and hyper-social. I felt uninspired to move freely through the space.

And yet I had yet another 6-day Contact Festival/Jam coming up. An all day travel excursion: trudging through city streets, then to buses, to planes, to vacated air force bases, to buses, to trains, back to trudging through city streets, brought me from Berlin to a teensy tiny apartment (the smallest I have ever been in, not even a shower or a kitchen sink) in the center of Stockholm. Poof, the next day I am on a weathered old bus still gleaming 1970 white paint-job navigating through a Nordic snow storm on my way to northern Sweden.

The Nordic Improvisation Meeting (NIM), is a festival held twice a year for the past ten years. 60 of us, mostly all bright-eyed Scandinavians, gathered in a large school in the middle of nowhere. The outside air was brisk and uninviting, but the sauna and the indoor pool were open and available all day and all night. Oh this was the perfect rest I needed. And somehow in between sleep and soak, I managed a few of the sweetest dances of my trip. They revived me. They reinspired me. They reminded me of the healing powers of this dance form.

After the festival I spent a week in Stockholm. I was able to secure a paid teaching gig at a local dance university. Teaching again, what I love, one of the clearest ways I get to express my gifts - it proved to be one of the highlights of my trip.

The city of Stockholm is majestic. I really felt held by the architecture. The sea water surrounding the city encourages deep breaths of appreciation. There is a wonderful blend of old and new – thin stone streets lined with over-priced café’s, and then big wide roads lined along the water. And even an old Viking boat for tourists to gawk over.