Last weekend, students of Hotel School The Hague campus Amsterdam organized an amazing charity dinner for the Koninklijk Nederlands Geleidehonden Fonds (KNFG) at their campus in Amsterdam. I was one of the sixty lucky ones to support this great initiative and try and eat a three course dinner… blindfolded. Two ambassadors of the KNFG, and their Golden Retrievers Milou and Dusty, kicked off with an interesting story of how the KNFG helps blind and visually impaired people to participate in society. The ladies shared their feelings about the importance of this evening: ‘Welcome to our world. We commend you for joining us in the dark for a while.’
Did you know?
Most probably you know that seeing-eye dogs are trained to lead blind people around obstacles. But I, for one, didn’t realize they are partially (red-green) color blind and are not capable of interpreting street signs. The human half of the guide dog team does the directing – nowadays with the help of the Internet and Apps for blind people (some of it connected to the white cane such as Ariadne GPS). These apps can help to explore cities since the dog’s job is only to navigate. Also, I didn’t realize the complexity of the recruitment criteria (dog’s DNA: health, behavior and age), the formal puppy training and the importance of guidance for both dog and owner. Did you know that a trained dog ‘thinks’ two meters high and one meter wide? Or that they’re never allowed to swim – just to make sure they won’t take a spontaneous dive while they are on duty later on? Well, I didn’t and I am glad that I do now.
Six senses
Anyway: back to this unique dinner experience! ‘How will I enjoy my dinner when I can’t see it?’ I asked myself aloud, when one of the students handed me my blindfold – a KLM eye mask was the last thing I could see. Well, I definitely got more than I bargained for. Once in the dark, I realized that I forgot to check where my glass was and I spent the next minute fondling the table in front of me, that I shared with my friend R. and four lovely strangers. My perception of the environment and the interaction of my still operating senses, changed immediately after I was left with only five… ‘I smell chicken and I ordered a vegetarian meal,’ I started the conversation. This brought us to debate the manipulation and desensitization of taste and smell by images. Even though I had to spend much time to find my food and navigate it in the direction of my mouth in a somewhat decent way, the food was wonderful. Maybe even better were the discussions of our new circumstances:
•Are the eyes the mirror to ones soul?
•How are we surviving the image culture – the TV age – preoccupied with appearance?
•How do you actually define a sense and are temperature, pain and balance senses too?
•Did I finish the food on my plate?
•Where is the waiter, and what is his name?
•Etiquette concerns. As in: should I use my fingers to feel the food?
•Is it just me? Or why is everyone all of a sudden talking so loudly and why are their tools making so much noise?
•If you would have to choose which sense you would have to be without. Which one would it be (Instantly, I chose smell. Then, realizing quickly that smell equals emotion, I switched to taste)?
•Which TV images of last week would we have loved to ‘not see’ (unanimous we picked Gaddafi)
•Is this my or my neighbors’ water glass?
•Does TV invite you to believe that what you see is reality?
To cut it short: in between courses we were allowed to take off our masks and… that was a bit of a relief. Meanwhile, the Hotel School The Hague students proudly announced that they could donate € 1,896 to KNFG as a result of this dinner. Well done!
Hotelschool The Hague campus Amsterdam (photo by Illonka Brands)
Food for Thought
I couldn’t help noticing that even the tone and content of our conversation changed drastically when one can have eye contact with the people around you (we spoke less and looked around and at each other’s plates). During dessert, R. shared a story about the Swiss novelist and dramatist Max Frisch (1911-1991) who explored the nature of human identity, individuality, and responsibility: ‘Frisch’s work is characterized by an ironic depiction of the issues confronting man in a technological society,’ according to R.. And, she quoted from the novel Gantenbein (1964) about a man faking to his lover he is blind: ‘I know I’m the happiest of lovers.’
Further reading:
Do you want a similar experience – in a dark room setting though? Check out CTaste in Amsterdam
Production and all photos by Illonka Brands
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