U.S. Centricity

It’s almost exactly a year ago. Fall is in full bloom in Chicago, but the heat and humidity has staying power in Hong Kong. It is my first time ever leaving the country. I have gone coast to coast, touched the southernmost point in the continental U.S., surfed in La Jolla, snowboarded in the Rockies, swam off Long Island, boated in the keys, but never once crossed a thicker boarder than state to state. It’s a work trip, and I am traveling alone, fearing not the fifteen hour flight, or the seven million people, or the two weeks away from home. I’m a cautious, planned fellow. I use my first day in Hong Kong to the fullest, getting my tourist on, exhausting myself, experiencing a new world, taking pictures, living. In this new world, on the other side of the world, I feel comfortable, at ease with the transit system, confident in my map reading skills, relaxed despite a non-international cell phone, which, upon arrival, renders itself as no more or less useful than a pocket watch. It isn’t until my first day in the office before I feel the gravity of the distance, and the egotism of my perception.

My time working is spent in a lab, with subject matter experts, lab managers, and lab technicians. The SMEs know the content, the mangers schedule the resources, the technicians perform the test. I’m here to document the tests with a handheld Sony and a reasonably steady hand, assuming my evening prior held an umbrella, and after scripting, recording, and editing, produce an on-the-job video reference guide along with a platform for international lab communication and discussion. I’ve done some of these back in Northbrook, and I want to show the entire team, the half dozen lab techs, two managers, and two SMEs, along with my ULU colleague, what I’ve done, and what I expect out of them at this morning kickoff meeting in a conference room that is less than accommodating.

I talk for seven plus or minus two minutes and show a short snippet of something I’ve created in the past, pausing for explanation and emphasis. My goal: simple, pressure-less scenarios where we stage very little. My role is that of a documenter, not videographer. I introduce myself, my role, my history, and my future. I’m received with wide eyes and cognizant reactions, with head nods and smiles, with understanding and eagerness. I’m dressed well, impressed with my speech of sorts, and feeling like I owned the room. I figure I’ve just kicked this week off to such high levels of production that people will wonder if it was two people sent across the Pacific and not just one, even though the flight from Chicago flies up through Wisconsin, across Canada, north of Alaska, steers just clear of the North Pole, then slides back down the globe, comes within an earshot of Japan, and finally comes to rest in the south of China.

This is where my world gets shifted. I glance over to my host from UL University, who, in the matter of seconds, deflates all momentum I ever dreamed I built.

‘Chris, do you mind if I translate what you said?’ What?

I literally talked at a group of twelve people sitting around a small conference table, grinning like an idiot, for seven plus or minus two minutes, and if I had to assign a percentage to how much, on average, was comprehended, I would put it at seven plus or minus two percent. How arrogant. How selfish. How naïve. How honest.

It’s two week ago. Fall is in full bloom in Chicago, and also in Switzerland. It’s my first time traveling to Europe. I’ve been to Hong Kong, Macau, and Penang, Malaysia in the last twelve months, but never crossed the Atlantic. The flight from Chicago to Zurich actually crosses the Atlantic, but up closer to Iceland. I’m traveling for work, alone, and the nine hours on a plane are nothing compared to the fifteen that I’ve graced six different times. A rarely discussed but highly useful benefit of international travel is that domestic travel is a breeze. My two weeks of travel before this flight negate the usual time spent on planning, but my international phone equips me with everything necessary to get from Zurich to St. Gallen, from St. Gallen to Horn, and from Horn to my hotel, the Bad Horn Hotel. Or so I think.

I de-board, make it through customs, and retrieve my luggage, all without removing my headphones, keeping my recent kick of Childish Gambino flowing. I know that a train will take me to St. Gallen, so I begin my trek through Zurich International, following the sign of what I can only assume is a picture of an engine car. I escalate down a few levels into a massive mall, and down one more level to a platform. The scene feels familiar. It feels like the Metra. So I retreat up a level to an automated kiosk that looks to be selling train tickets. English is an option. I can’t figure out which train line to pick, but I can search, and I find my place, purchase my ticket, and feel great. Then I remember where I am. The train ticket comes out in one hundred percent German. I speak no German. I escalate up, and down, and up, and down, looking for clues, and wind up clueless. I train pulls in and de-boards, so I ask a conductor what platform (of four) I need to be on. He says maybe three, not sure. I walk to 3, less than confident, until I find a timetable. In German. But I recognize ‘Zurich Flughafen’ as where I’m currently located, and I see St. Gallen, my destination. Platform 2.

I board and ride for an hour to St. Gallen, relatively content that I made it this far. I know I must transfer to a train to get to Horn, and I see another kiosk. I search, again, by destination, find Horn, purchase ticket, and walk away. The ticket, if you couldn’t guess, is in German. And absolutely nothing of it makes sense. The last ticket at least said ‘St. Gallen’ on it. This one just says ‘Einzelbillett,’ which I’m pretty sure isn’t where I’m going. I also see the word ‘bus,’ which I guess means bus. I know, I should have been a detective. Technology-able, I use a translator app on my phone to figure out that this is an adult ticket for a train or a bus that cost 6.80 Swiss Francs. There is literally no more information I can glean from this ticket, so I ask an attendant. She tells me bus, 31. I say bus 31? She says yes, 31.

I walk outside to see easily two dozen bus route pick-ups. I walk to every one, and not one 31. Frazzled, I pull my phone back out and check directions, current location to Bad Horn Hotel, and it tells me to take a bus. Which bus, doesn’t say. Just take a bus. At 11:31. Ah ha! There’s the 31. I follow a link to the transit website. I find information that it’s bus number 21016. I don’t think that’s a route. So I start with ‘210,’ which I saw earlier, walk to the route, and see on the back of the sign it says ‘Horn.’ I wait ten minutes and board, showing the bus driver my ticket to his confusion before he allows me on. Forty minutes later I’m at my hotel and all is well.

The point of this isn’t that I’m an awesome international travel when forced to improvise. The point is, in Hong Kong, and in Switzerland, I just assumed everything would be easy. I assumed everyone could speak English. I assumed that a foreign traveler would be catered to. I assumed that I shouldn’t have to plan ahead to get from the airport to a small country-side city 50 miles away. Then I thought about the alternative.

What if you were German, traveling to Chicago for the first time?

Your grasp on the English language was enough to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you.’ You land at O’hare, terminal 5. You follow signs that say ‘train to the city’ even though all you’re doing is looking at a picture of a train and hoping for the best. You have to buy a ticket to board a train, which, luckily, one runs one direction. You take the blue line towards the city. You’re buzzing by hectic traffic on 90/94, you’re checking out the buildings in Logan Square, all of a sudden you’re underground. There’s no end to this train. There’s no final destination. Looking at the map of the colored lines, you figure you should get off somewhere in the middle. So you do, and you follow the masses to the surface. Now you’re in the middle of the tallest buildings you’ve ever seen, since no building in Munich can be taller than the tallest church peak. You panic. How do you get to Cary? There’s no station in site. You pull out your phone. You can see all the train tracks lead to something called ‘Ogilve.’ That can’t be right. You walk to Union Station, because despite your lack of knowledge of the English language, Union seems much more American. You try to buy a ticket, but you don’t know what line to take. You finally ask someone, ‘Cary?’ They say you’re in the wrong building. It takes you 20 minutes just to get back to the street. You finally buy a ticket for the Northwest Line. Now you enter an enormous hanger of dozens of tracks, scanning the digital titles, hoping for a clue. Trains are coming and going faster than you can process, not knowing if it’s your train or not. More panic. You finally get the courage to ask someone, and they brush you off because we don’t have time for you. Then, you see it! There’s a 7 on your ticket, and a 7 up above. You finally board, hoping, as your train departs, that you guessed correctly, and for 75 minutes you wonder, so this is Chicago?