The concept is pretty simple. Its completely dark in the restaurant (as the picture on the left suggests) and you are supposed to get a feeling for how it feels like to be blind.  You are served by blind or nearly blind people and you only have a vague idea about the menu you are about to eat. You only know the kind of meat and you have the chance to tell them what you absolutely do not want to eat.

So far, so good. We thought it would be nice to try this restaurant and since its quite expensive for a normal night out (about 50 Euro per person, but 3 course menu and really amazingly tasty food) we gave it Christians parents for their birthday.

So we went there some time ago, and it war really good. The food was amazing and it was surprisingly easy to eat without seeing anything. You can just picture your plate by searching thinks with your cutlary. And really, I never used my fingers. It was just not necessary.

Their advertisement suggests, that your taste is much better if you can’t see anything, and you realize other things while eating. Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve tasted anything different then in a situation where I can see what I eat. But I really liked the fact, that you weren’t disturbed by anything. It was somehow relaxing to just see nothing… Just hear everybody talking and to picture what the room may look like, or feel what material your chair was made from. It was a nice experience.

But you should not be piggy about food… You never know what you are about to eat before you actually eat it… And I honestly would not try the Seafood menu

Anyway the highlight of the trip was not the rainy weekend in Munich but the day before, where the sun was still shining and when I visited Tobias, a friend of mine who recently moved to Munich. I met him for a beer Thursday night when he was telling me that he just bought a Lederhosen to go to the “Wiesen” (Oktoberfest) the next day with his girlfriend who is originally from Bavaria. So he offered me to join them. And what should I say, it was fun. I was totally not dressed up and I felt like the only German speaking person without a Dirndl, especially because we where sitting with all these Bavarian and Austrian people at one table. But I guess this was, why it was fun! I drank a Mass, I ate a Händl and was standing on the benches singing awful German Folksongs… But with all these people around me and the beer in my hand it was fun. Even when it was 11am in the Morning

I guess I won’t do that again so soon and I really thank you, Tobias, for taking me there.

So we start with a picture of the wonderful old campus of the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) in Stockholm

and me participating in my first “real” conference HSCC.

Part of the conference was a posh dinner in the hall of the Nobel Price Banquet in the “Stadshuset” in Stockholm. I think it will be hard to beat that again with another conference!

After the conference was over, I went out for dinner with Eva, Rebekah and Florian. By that time we didn’t know, that we will also spent the weekend together since we will all be stuck in Stockholm.

So I had time to try another crown picture… I think its better than the last one

I spent my weekend in this wonderful hostel called Castanea in Gamla Stan – to be recommended!

On Saturday, I also had time to take a long walk along the water

and back over the bridge..

After taking the night bus to Copenhagen, I waited for the train to Hamburg with all this people… I was surprised how they all fit into the train…

And after a 17hour journey I finally reached Berlin on late Sunday afternoon.

So the best thing I could think of, was going to the train station. And obviously many people had the same idea! It was so packed! I’ve never seen a train station so crowded…  So I got a number 271 – while they where serving number 30. OK, fair enough, I was prepared to wait. But after they served only 6 persons during one hour I got quite annoyed… So I decided to give up and try to book something over the Internet.

I was quite lucky and found a night bus for tonight, to bring me to Copenhagen. And from there the trains are going to the rest of Germany. All Swedish trains are booked out until Tuesday by now, and also going to Oslo to visit a friend was impossible, because there wasn’t any train seat available. And today I heard that even all rental cars are booked as well, not speaking about ferries…

So for now, I’m happy to have a ticket and socialized with other people from the conference who got stuck as well… Somehow a slightly different form of networking

Everybody should fika! Everywhere in the world! Not just in Sweden!