170/356: Dinner At "Blinde Insel"

I went to have dinner at "Blinde Insel" last night. I can honestly say it was a lot of fun.

What is "Blinde Insel"?
It is a temporary restaurant that comes to "Reithalle" once a year. You dine in complete darkness beeing served by blind waiters.

I went there with a few friends and I think everybody had a great time. At first it is a bit disorienting. I admit that I held on to my beer for quite some time. Just to have an anchor, something that I already had when I was still in the light.

They lead you in, in a row and once you are seated, you are not allowed to get up by yourself. You get a table number and the name of your waiter and whenever you need something you call both out loudly. They don't tell you what is on the menu but you are supposed to guess what you are eating. I was doing all right with what I was having in general (soup, mashed potatoes, peas etc.) but was not able to place the more subtle tastes.. like what exactly was in the soup.

And oh yes, that soup to begin with was quite a challenge. My tactic to not get everything on myself was, to put my face really close to the dish. Too close in fact. I ended up with the tip of my nose in the soup. After that though, I managed better than I would have thought.

There was a piece of meat for mains that we had to cut, that was also a challenge. I managed to cut three pieces of more or less manageable size. I am glad that nobody saw me jam it into my mouth. But then again, I don't think the others fared any better.

All in all it was really great to experience this and I can only recommend you try it for yourself if you are in Bern during the next few days. For obvious reasons there are no pictures from the dinner itself but I did take a few before we went in.

On a side note, I finally finished the 1000 piece puzzle.. took my long enough.... annnnnd of course I am missing one piece. Back in the box it goes.