Chapter 2: I’m the Fool You Expected

Or how I discovered the cure for jetlag

By Guy Thompson

It was more than 30 years ago that I passed out, and all I could hear upon coming back into consciousness was everyone speaking German. Frantic German. Concerned German. Very German German.

It was the third time I had ever passed out (and the last time since, although there was a close call after an incident in the woodshop years ago, but we’re not here to talk about that), with the other two from shock due to injuries, while this one was, technically, due to blood loss. I say technically because it was during a blood test. Just a vial, really, but it was enough to put me on the floor. One moment I was standing there watching the nurse slide the needle out of the crook of my elbow and the next… hearing German everywhere. 

As I came to, I had no sense of where I was, except it was all hard, flat, and cold. Turned out, that was the sickly-green tile floor in the depressingly painted doctor’s office. The slide into blackness this time happened so smoothly that I didn’t realize I had passed out. The previous two times, I felt it coming as I tried to deal with the pain from an injury (elbow the first time, smashed finger the second) and knew I was going down. In both cases, the blackout only lasted a few seconds, and I was right back up and off to get looked at for the injuries. But this one just… happened. Forget the buildup. Forget graying out. Just smash cut to black and roll credits.

 It wasn’t until I was helped up and sitting on the end of the examination table that it came back to me. I was in a doctor’s office somewhere in downtown Frankfurt am Main, Germany, having only arrived there that morning. 

So that explained the German. 

The trip to the doctor’s office was to get our visas to stay for six months as part of the International 4-H Youth Exchange (IFYE) and included a chest x-ray and a blood test. Some of the German finally got translated into English, and it turned out the nurses were asking if I had passed out before. Did I have a medical condition? Would I please not be too upset with them for this? It took a while for this last to get translated, by which time I was feeling okay. No wooziness. No pain. Nothing. It was like I had just awoken from an invigorating nap.

To be honest, until I found myself on the cold tile floor, I hadn’t been feeling half bad. I hadn’t been feeling half good, either. 

It was approaching mid-June in 1992 and I, along with Chris Doehler of Colorado, and Melissa Malone of Illinois, were all fresh off a trans-Atlantic flight that had not included a whole lot of sleep, followed by a lot of walking with our luggage through the Frankfurt airport, on a train, on a bus, up and down side streets to finally arrive at the Hotel am Zoo in Frankfurt. Then there were the steps, still with luggage, up to our little rooms. We were all tired. A little dehydrated, as long flights will do that to you, and let’s be honest, not really at our best. We barely had time to put our luggage in our rooms before Frau What’s-Her-Name, who had met us at the airport and dragged us to the far side of downtown Frankfurt, was back telling us we had to get moving to get the paperwork done so that we could get our visas and not have to turn right back around and get sent home. That would have been a disaster, arriving back in Ohio less than a week after leaving. “So, how much German culture did you manage to learn in the 36 hours they let you stay in the country?” I probably would have made something up, but they would have known. It would have been in the newspaper.

We hustled back out of the hotel, a tight little four-story place just across the street from the Frankfurt  Zoo, hence the name, and onto another bus. Even if forced to, I could not have told you which direction we went or how to get back to the Hotel am Zoo. I could have been blindfolded and would have come up with the same result if asked how to get back. We stopped at one government agency. Got paperwork. Something got stamped. Then off to another. Finally, a quick dash to the doctor’s office. A chest x-ray was first. It didn’t hurt. 

Then the blood draw. I recall complimenting the nurse on how painless that was as she slid the needle out of – BAM – down for the count. 

Once I assured them that I was fine, great, in fact, they did the same tests on Chris and Melissa, who probably were a little worried at this point, though neither would admit to it. They passed with flying colors as neither one of them passed out. Show-offs.

##

Getting to Germany was even more difficult than the blood test, though I should note that it did not involve passing out. 

You see, I was actually trying to get back to Australia. No, I didn’t get lost. Just bear with me for a moment. 

In the summer of 1988, I participated in a sports exchange program, joining a cross-country team made up of runners from across the country, who went Down Under for the month of July to train and run in a couple of races. I loved it. I wanted to get back. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?

After being a 10-year 4-H member, I went off to college, and in 1991, as I was heading into my senior year, I learned of the IFYE program – International 4-H Youth Exchange. In Ohio, the program was paid for through a scholarship, meaning Ohio IFYEs at the time were chosen only after a rigorous, incredibly competitive interview process. At least ten of us were vying for three spots, but it seemed like every 4-Her in the state wanted to do this. The interview that Saturday morning in October started with me facing a group of interviewers. One of the younger ones, about my age, at the far end of the table, asked me a question and, I’m not making this up, I thought I was so nervous, my ears had broken. She had asked something. I had heard words and the inflection sounded like a question. But in my nervous state, I had no idea what. The program director, Mary Lynn Thalheimer, leaned forward and told me that I had just arrived at a host family and my host sister here had just asked me a question. 

So the panic that my ears were somehow no longer working properly was replaced by the panic that I had taken one foreign language in high school, Spanish, for all of two years, and that had been a very long time ago. So I asked her to repeat the question. She did. It was in Spanish. Okay, seeing how I was a C student in Spanish, this still wasn’t going to end well. I tried to figure out what she had asked, working through my dim memory of Spanish classes. I ended up taking so much time, Mary Lynn decided we had better move along or else we would never finish the interview. 

Following that interview session, there was a second with a different group of interrogators. It went about as well.

That evening at home I figured it was a nice try. But you don’t blow an interview like that and get to take a trip. We were instructed to call a number that evening, where a message would announce who the Ohio IFYEs were. I called. I heard my name first. I hung up before I heard the other two names. 

Holy crap. I was going! Somewhere!

I wouldn’t get to choose as the National 4-H Council would take care of that. In the application, we were allowed to tell them where we would like to go – the first choice, second, and third. Mine were, in order: 1) Australia, 2) England, and 3) Germany. Australia was first because of the idea previously discussed. England was second because, well, they spoke English. Germany was the third choice because during my senior year in high school, my family had hosted a German exchange student and, more importantly, it was the home of Porsche. I really wasn’t hoping for Germany (see my GPA for Spanish for the reasoning behind this), but I couldn’t just leave the third choice blank and risk being sent to a place where I didn’t know the language, and they didn’t have Porsches. 

It was towards the end of the year when I heard from national that I got my third choice. So, no trip back to Australia. Bugger. Still, Germany. The Land of Porsche! Could be worse.

I had better get started on learning German then. Right? Right. Eventually. I mean, I had until June to learn German. How hard of a language could it be?

##

I did listen to some German language tapes. On the plane while over the Atlantic. Well, one tape. Okay, side A of the first cassette. 

Fortunately, Chris was pretty adept at German and had been the one who translated the frantic questions after I regained consciousness. 

We got back to our hotel (don’t ask me how) and had a serious discussion about what to have for our first German dinner in Germany. It was a big decision, one that would set the tone for our time in the country. What sort of German foods might we like? I knew sauerkraut was out, but what else could we find? It was time to discover German cuisine. Live like a German!

There was a Pizza Hut across the street from the hotel. 

Once sated with good old pizza, we returned to our rooms and turned our attention to the tourism maps that had been provided to us in our packet from the Landjϋgen, looking for the seven towns we would be living in. Unlike other exchange programs where the exchange student stays in one home unless they majorly screw up, this one was meant to give us a broad understanding of the different areas of the country, so we were scheduled to stay with seven families, averaging about 2-1/2 to three weeks per family. The three of us would be in the same state at the same time to keep it simple, but each with a different family, except in one case, and in all but a few cases, we would be far enough apart we actually wouldn’t be able to get together. 

We turned to our rather basic maps of a country that was roughly the size of Montana. First up was the state of Heβen (Hessen). We found Heβen easy enough since it included the city we were in. And the towns we were staying in… Ah. Right. I’m sure they’re here somewhere. We traced our fingers around the map. Okay. Don’t panic. Surely they’re not going to send us to places that don’t actually exist. Right?

With a huge sigh of relief, I found my first town: Weilburg. 

The victory was short-lived as it looked as if only two of my towns were big enough to appear on the tourism map. The second one was Berlin. So that was an easy find. 

Clearly, a more detailed map would be needed. Which led to another dread feeling; we were staying “in the middle of nowhere” with most of our families. After the excitement of going through Frankfurt that afternoon (post-blood test) and getting our first real taste of German life, it bummed us out that we would be shuttled off to places that didn’t seem important enough for the German Tourism Bureau (or whatever it was called) to bother putting on their maps. I had lived most of my life in one of those towns that only really showed up on more detailed maps. I was not thrilled. 

At the time, the three of us were also a little disappointed that we weren’t going to be closer to each other, except for those few cases. Okay, true, we had only met four days earlier just outside Washington, D.C. at the National 4-H Center for orientation. We had met all of the outbound IFYEs from around the country, hung out, (some at a bar as all of the IFYEs were college students or graduates), went to Union Station to see a movie (Alien 3, my first time to see a David Fincher film), saw Senator Paul Simon (no, not the singer), played a lot of card games, read a book I had picked up at the Columbus airport (a little tome called Jurassic Park) and, somewhere in there, we were all given some instructions on our upcoming travels. I think we all took that part very seriously. 

We also learned what the acronym, IFYE, really stood for: I’m the Fool You Expected. I like to think I managed to live up to that moniker as well as anyone possibly could.

From there, it had been a quick flight to JFK Airport in New York, where our large group broke up further, heading for different gates across the width and breadth of the airport. Chris, Melissa, and I casually strolled across the terminal to our next gate. We hung out on the flight, naturally, and bonded further in our concern over being furiously shuttled around Frankfurt and then dumped at the hotel with little more than instructions on what trains to take in the morning and spending money from the program. 

And now, just four short days later, the three of us were the only thing we had in common with our surroundings. Why break up the act?

There was no turning back. We had our marching orders. The next morning, June 13, we would split up onto different trains and off to our first family farms. 

Those who know me well will note two potential major issues with the narrative up to this point. The first I have touched upon is my rather tenuous grasp of the German language. I was less than 12 hours from heading out into the German countryside by myself, and I had more pieces of luggage than words I could say in German. I knew (in order of importance): Achtung, gesundheit, and Kindergarten. And I only knew Achtung because of the U2 album Achtung Baby, hence why it tops the list. 

Second issue: Farms. Don’t read that the wrong way. I like farms. Most of my friends and family in Ohio lived and worked on farms. I visited many of them. Stayed with cousins on their farm. Had toy tractors growing up. Knew that there were black and white cows and brown and white cows. I had helped out at the 4-H fair enough to be comfortable around farm animals and the sights and smells that come with them. 

I am not, however, a farmer. Not even close. I was the poster child that not all 4-Hers take farm-related projects. I took creative writing and photography during my last four years of 4-H. I had never driven a tractor (other than those toy ones, and I hadn’t done that for years.) However, since the program was between 4-H and the Landjϋgen, this whole exchange was about agriculture. Every family would be ag-based in some fashion, even my family in the metropolis of Berlin. How? I had no idea. One of the little surprises the program gave us was a dearth of specific information on each family. We had a family name, address, and phone. What kind of farm? No idea. Did they have kids? Who knew?! Did they even have a Porsche? At least they could tell me that. It’s why I put Germany down as my third pick. But alas, no. 

I had heard so much about the German organizational skillset but had yet to see a lot of evidence. 

It was only because of sheer exhaustion that the three of us agreed we needed to stop trying to find places on the maps and get some sleep. It was going to be, after all, an awfully long day tomorrow. 

The next morning, we were up and back on a bus for a short ride to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station), where I got on one train, and Chris and Melissa got on another. I had managed to get myself and my luggage onto the right train before it left. I hadn’t left anything behind. I knew the town I was going to actually existed. Ah, life was good for about a minute.

How was my host family going to know who I was? 

Crap. They had no idea what I looked like. I had no idea what they looked like. And if the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt was any indication, train stations were pretty busy places. There had been thousands of people scurrying all over the station like serious little ants. 

Where in the station were they going to meet me? It would have been nice if they had told me something like “Next to the candy kiosk on the second platform from the east, look for the man holding the newspaper with the top left corner folded over. He’ll have an eye patch… in the middle of his forehead. Say ‘Pineapples aren’t meant to go on pizza.’ He will reply ‘But I don’t like sausage. It’s the wurst.’” Couldn’t they have at least done that? Nope. I was going in blind. 

In between trying to figure out how I was going to know my first family and how they were going to know me, I was also tasked with keeping track of where the train was at. Was my station the eighth stop or the ninth? I watched for signs. Watched the time. The train slowed down. A sign slid past the window – Wiesbaden Hbf. This was it. Or was there a second Wiesbaden? No. The train coasted to a stop. The cars gave a final lurch and doors opened.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about my family knowing who I was, since I was the one with the most luggage to get off the train in Wiesbaden. I was easy to spot. 

##

It was only later in the day that I realized something – I wasn’t jet lagged. I was tired, but I seemed to have adjusted nicely to the six-hour time difference. I attribute that solely to having passed out the day before. I don’t know how long I was out (they said just a minute or so), but once I was up off that doctor’s office tiled floor, I was fine. 

I don’t think you’re going to find passing out as a recommendation for dealing with jet lag in any reputable guidebook, though. Just saying.