story and photos by Kayte Deioma
My foot tentatively follows the unfamiliar cane, testing the ground to feel where the dirt path gives way to lawn. I brush against a tall bush and reach out to touch the waxy leaves with my fingers. Birds chirp somewhere nearby and the scent of earth and grass reach my nose. In a suddenly dark world, I find myself in what feels, smells and sounds like a garden or a park.
Hyper-aware that my cane keeps bumping into other people, I follow my guide’s voice until I am through the park. The sound of traffic rushing by on a busy street makes me stop. My cane finds the curb, bumping into a car and a bicycle before I reach the solid pole holding the traffic signal, which, my instructor assures me, will indicate when it is safe to cross.
I am learning to navigate a sightless world at Dialog im Dunkeln (Dialogue in the Dark) in Hamburg, Germany, where blind guides lead sighted visitors through invisible, yet multi-textured environments inside a converted coffee storeroom in the Speicherstadt (Warehouse District). The exhibit is designed to increase awareness among the mainstream population of the challenges of disability, while at the same time demonstrating that for the disabled, the world is not “less,” just different.
My visually deprived comrades on this journey are a group of American students on a German study program and my friend Birgit, who lives in Hamburg. Since we are all equally impaired, no one objects too much as we bump into each other feeling our way along an exterior wall and window into our next destination.
The aroma of cloves and cinnamon fill my nostrils as I enter. My fingers explore piles of burlap sacks filled with what? Coffee beans? Peppercorns? Birgit calls me over to some kind of raised pedestal, where my hands find bowls of powder. This is where the cinnamon smell is coming from. We are in a spice warehouse.
The student group has booked the short tour, so it is just Birgit and I who continue with our guide, Brita, out into the cool air, across a wobbly bridge onto a waiting boat. We can hear the water lapping and smell the sea air as we feel our way to a bench at the side of the boat.
I reach my cane over the side and splash it around to assure myself there is really water there. I know we are still inside the warehouse, but the sense of being out on the water is incredibly real.
The wind picks up and I am splashed by the spray as the engine starts, the boat rocks and we take off on our excursion. Brita tells us about the ships we are passing in port. She also describes the Ferris Wheel, tents and hoards of people gathered for the Harbor Festival, which I had seen for myself out in the real world earlier in the day, but now perceive only from her word pictures.
We disembark to a brief interlude of musical immersion, and then adjourn to the bar, where we have our coins ready to buy soft drinks from the blind bartender. I trust that he counts the coins correctly. My fingers are not familiar enough to make out the denominations of the Euros.
Seated at a low table, over bottles of Fanta that taste like Sprite (has someone played a joke on the bartender, or on us?), we have a chance to talk with Brita about her blindness and functioning in the world without sight. This opportunity to openly discuss what some would consider a sensitive subject is just one more dimension to our immersive experience, and does create a real dialogue in and about the dark.
Dialog im Dunkeln originated in Hamburg in 1988. Since then, they have created permanent or temporary exhibits in over 130 cities in 20 countries, providing more than 5000 jobs for the blind.
Dialogue in the Dark also offers special programs including “Dinner in the Dark,” “Blind Passenger” and on-location leadership training workshops “In the Dark.”
Reservations are required. Visit http://www.dialogimdunkeln.de/prehome_en.htm for more information.
Dialog im Dunkeln
Alter Wandrahm 4
20457 Hamburg
Booking line: 00 49 (0) 700 44 33 2000
The 
you’re seeing. Every inch of available surface and wall space is used for display, with no room left for interpretive panels. Although the density gives it a bit of a cluttered feel, the exhibits are artfully arranged by theme.
In the first gallery, musical instruments like pre-Hispanic gourd rattles, rain sticks, primitive xylophones and drums of logs and gourds are arranged together on a platform of large adobe bricks. Hand-crafted stringed instruments from tortoise-shell, gourd and armadillo skin guitars to inlaid, painted and beaded instruments adorn the back wall.
The eagle, serpent and cactus from the Mexican flag are painted on ceramic plates and pots in the styles of different regions, carved from wood, beaded in bright patterns and laid out in mosaics in the political and patriotic exhibit.
Almost 300 masks cover the opposite wall from floor to ceiling – smooth or hairy animal masks, carved or paper Mache devils and demons, blond, blue-eyed Mardi Gras giants and theatrical characters, and calavera skull masks for Day of the Dead. Each genre shows representations from different parts of Mexico.
The tour continues into a larger gallery where you’re greeted by a mountain of gourd art piled atop an incredible network of tree roots. The versatile squash becomes bowls, urns, canteens, rattles and wind chimes. Some have simple line art, more are elaborately painted in varying styles, others are intricately beaded with tiny colored glass beads. Among the gourds and roots, wooden or woven snakes, alligators and turtles cavort.
A corner of a marketplace has been recreated to the right, with life-size figures of women in traditional garb selling clay pots, rice, eggs, dried beans, fruits, vegetables and other miscellaneous goods. A painted mural backdrop continues the scene into the distance.
Beyond the Purépecha home is a Puebla kitchen with counters and walls detailed with ornamental Talavera tiles and pottery from the region. The arched ceiling and alcoves reflect the Moorish influence Spanish settlers brought to the area. A stove, sink and limestone water filter are built into the counter. A rack of molinillos, carved wooden whisks used for frothing chocolate milk, hangs on a wall. Heart and bird-shaped stone mortar and pestle sets called molcajetes and a stone metate for grinding corn are on display. Beaten copper pots find homes on the stove, wall and suspended from the ceiling. The dinner table, with multicolored, hand-painted chairs, is laden with representations of typical foods and tableware.
A nativity exhibit uses tree stumps as pedestals for dozens of crčches in different artistic styles from around Mexico, from tiny sets you could hold in the palm of your hand to three-foot ceramic figures. The holy family is represented as European, Mexican or Indiginous people, from monochrome to multihued, in materials including clay, tin, wood, sea shells, straw, papier-Mâché, fabric, beads and wire.
Other religious symbols include crucifixes made of everything from roots and branches to bottle caps, brightly colored or naturally toned churches, angels and Virgin of Guadalupe figures. A recreated chapel is populated with a life-size congregation of fiberglass citizens modeled from real people representative of the various indigenous groups in Mexico. Each is clothed in appropriate regional attire.
On the altar, Jesus is suspended within the wood frame outline of a cross, backed by dozens of tin luminarias. The cross is flanked on either side by elaborate hand-painted clay “Trees of Life” that each consist of hundreds of individual characters and details telling a particular life story. One incredible Tree of Life by Tiburcio Soteno tells the life story of a skeleton character with all his skeletal family and friends, from birth through marriage and death. Another is filled with mermaids surrounded by hundreds of vibrantly colored fish and other sea creatures.
A final side gallery is devoted to toys. Dolls and clay figures, mechanical toys and games, doll houses and miniature musical instruments, toy trucks, cars and buses piled high with produce on top, are all a delight to the eye. On one side, a girl has lined up all her dolls on toy chairs to watch her brother put on a puppet show.
The audio tour is 45 minutes if you listen to it straight through, but I found myself stopping the tape often to spend more time admiring the examples of different styles of craftsmanship in each exhibit. Once you’ve finished the tour, the gift shop is choc full of the work of some of the best folk artists from around the country. It’s worth a little extra time to explore, even if you are not buying, because most things are really one of a kind art works (even if there are variations) rather than replicas of pieces in the museum.