For more than a year and a half ago, my friend Iris and I had resolved to book a table at the blindekuh restaurant in Zurich (the waiting time was known to be quite long). Of course, booking so long in advance was a sure way of forgetting it and when the date came, last October, neither she nor I had time for it. So we moved the appointement to this saturday, this dime duly noting it down and preparing ourselves not to miss this experience this time.
For eating out at the blindekuh is an experience. “Blinde Kuh” is the German name of that particular game where one person is blindfolded and has to catch the other players (no idea how it’s called in English, it’s the equivalent of “colin-maillard” in French). Anyway, the whole point is that the restaurant is set in complete darkness (as in absolutely no light). This started as an action of the swiss association for blind people to sensibilize the population of what it feels to be sight disabled. They had a quite sucessful pavillon at the National Exhibition in 2002 and their two restaurants in Basel and Zurich are so popular that it’s best to book a table several months in advance.
The restaurant is set in a former Jugendstil chapel near the Tiefenbrunnen quartier in Zurich. Upon entering the premises, guests are welcomed to a quiet lobby where they get information about how the dinner will proceed. Clothes, bags and all belongings are put into lockers, phones and illuminated watches are strictly forbidden inside the restaurant. Each party recieves a small card, with a particular number, that will serve them to pay at the end of the meal. Tonight’s menu is displayed in the lobby and the guests can make their minds about what they would like to eat. Then a waitress, who is herself blind, leads the party inside the restaurant, through a kind of acclimatation tunnel, to their table.
Although quite disturbed at first, one grows rather quickly accustomed to the surroundings. Every gesture has to be made with the greatest of care so as not to tip down the drinks… or venture to far near the table neighbors! Eating is fun, with the only drawback that there is no way to know how much food is left on the plate. Probing with the fingers is the best solution. And anyway, nobody will complain about your uncivil behaviour, since nobody can see you!
In all, it was a very entertaining evening, a rare experience in life, and way less scary than I thought first. Of course, it was expensive for rather plain food, but this is Zurich after all and one doesn’t get to eat in complete darkness every day. It was fun!
[Update (Feb 7): saw in the paper today that there’s a similar restaurant in Paris called Dans le Noir, with a franchise in London. I also learned that there’s a word for all these restaurants offering more than just food: Erlebnisgastronomie. Once again, there can be only a German word to sum it up niceley like this! :-) ]
The program of Paléo [1] will be officially public today at noon, although it can already be unofficially found on the ‘net. I usually go for at least two evenings, but this year I guess it won’t be possible (I will be at, say, PhD due-date minus 1 week). It would have been hard to choose a convenient day anyway, because the bands I like are more or less spread over the week: Taraf de Haïdouks on Tuesday, Depeche Mode and The Dandy Warhols on Wednesday, Louise Attaque on Thursday, Tracy Chapman on Friday, etc… 
About that time last year, I went to 
The 
This week’s Time Magazine publishes a 
My cold released its grip somewhat this afternoon (the antibiotics did help) and I was finally able to organize my pictures and generate the