Wie Licht schmeckt (2005)

The rather introverted Lukas lives in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. He is growing up with the typical problems of a fourteen-year-old who no longer knows what to do with his parents. Even his grandfather, whom he used to be very close to, no longer really understands him and, out of indifference, simply gives him money for his birthday. All this annoys Lukas, so he enjoys his fourteenth-birthday celebration all the more. Since he has been looking forward to the occasion so much, he celebrates his special day for a full three days in his hometown. During a visit to a restaurant, he meets Sonja, a seventeen-year-old blind waitress who manages her job very well despite her disability. The only thing she has never seen is the sun—or daylight. Lukas, who has fallen head over heels in love with her, decides to show her that the light she has never seen can also be tasted. The blind Sonja teaches Lukas to notice subtleties that get lost in the ordinary daily life of someone who can see—for example, to pay attention to quiet sounds, or to feel objects and infer from them the context in which they appear and what significance they have there. Lukas realizes that this way of seeing his surroundings had previously escaped him. He begins to develop greater sensitivity to his environment and to pay attention to things he had not given much thought to before. As the story progresses, Lukas and Sonja find themselves in the faint glow of the setting sun on Munich’s grand boulevard, Maximilianstraße, where the two of them “taste the light of the sun” together.