The reversed roles
The blind guide is the expert; you are helpless.
Dr. Avishai Teicher โ CC BY 2.5 ยท Dltl2010 โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Jorge Franganillo โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Jorge Franganillo โ CC BY 2.0
The guides are thoroughly trained for it and explain before you enter how to ask to leave at any moment, with a short exit route from every room. Most people who feel anxious adjust within the first ten minutes, as they start relying on their other senses. But if you have severe claustrophobia the experience may not suit you, and that is said plainly at booking.
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Dialogue in the Dark is not an exhibition to view but an experience to undergo in complete darkness. A small group enters a series of entirely lightless rooms โ no light at all, no phone, no illuminated watch โ led by a blind guide through reconstructed scenes: a street with traffic, a market, a forest, a boat, and a cafe where you actually have a drink. The reversal of roles is the essence of it: in these rooms the blind guide is the expert and you are wholly helpless. You learn to rely on hearing, touch and smell, and discover how much you had been depending on sight without noticing. The conversation with the guide is central rather than incidental โ hence the name. The idea began in Frankfurt in 1988 and spread to dozens of countries, but the Hamburg site is among the oldest and largest. The experience runs about ninety minutes and advance booking is necessary. Some people find total darkness unsettling at first โ this is expected, and the guides explain it before you go in.
The blind guide is the expert; you are helpless.
Ordering and drinking without seeing anything.
Alter Wandrahm 4, 20457 Hamburg