I've intended to do this for a while; and yesterday I was with a few friends, about to go out to lunch, and we started talking about Blindekuh (http://www.blindekuh.ch/zuerich/eingang.html), a German restaurant which serves the customers in complete darkness, staffed completely with blind waitstaff. So it seemed like the right time to do it, to try to capture that experience.

I have a number of bandanas, an eyemask, etc. at home that would serve as excellent blindfolds. But when the spirit calls...and so, after a brief scrounge through the city, we ended up with a bright blue thick tissue paper blindfold. And, once I had the blindfold, why delay? So I was blindfolded and led for the couple of miles walk to the restaurant. The first sensation of walking blind really was one of fear--for the first few moments, I was sure that I was about to walk into a pole standing right in front of me. Despite being led by two very good friends, this impression was difficult to shake; the fear of the unknown right in front of you, when you can't see it coming, is very powerful.

After a while, though, the walk became mostly routine. One very strange impression was that it didn't really feel like I was traveling. While I knew I was moving, without sight, I had much less of a sense of place, of where I was, and so it was hard for me to feel that I had moved from one place to another--almost like walking on a treadmill.

There were other things along the way, too--noticing that sounds seemed much closer than I would have expected, giving me the impression that everything was nearby; detecting street crossings more by the wind that blew through the intersection than by any difference in pavement or ramp incline; suddenly having both hands squeezed in feat as a car swerved in front of us into oncoming traffic (but having no idea, and feeling no sense of danger except through them); hearing music and a street fair, but not having a mental picture of what it looked like; hearing people murmur about "oh, a surprise!" or "a scavenger hunt" or even "can I tickle him?" I guess the bright blue really does make it seem like more of a game than anything else.

Once we were in the restaurant, things seemed more under my control. Even though I couldn't see, I could (and did) tentatively use my hands to get a sense of what things were on the table, and where they were. A restaurant is a familiar enough setting that I could fit myself into it, even without my sight, and using touch to determine where things were was less of a shift than I would have expected (although I was certainly slower, and more tentative). I did think of things in terms of /space/, rather than of vision...of their relative location rather than their appearance.

It was definitely interesting to experience the world in a different way; but by the time we left the restaurant, three hours after the blindfold had gone on, I was more than ready to remove it.