[bhc3]

I've flown to Germany from San Francisco several times. Nine time zones away. The flight leaves early afternoon in SF, and I'm in Germany by late morning. The travel included a 40 minute train ride from Frankfurt. I sleep very little on flights, and I'm exhausted on that train ride.

I used to try the "stay awake until night" method once I was in Germany. It wasn't very effective, I didn't adjust for several days. I then tried something different.

As soon as I get to my hotel (around lunchtime), I take a nap of 3 hours or so. I don't let myself sleep beyond that. I then get up and do some activities. I have dinner at the regular local time and then go to sleep at the usual time in the evening.

I've found that I rapidly adjust to the local time and have very little jet lag thereafter. It's that initial nap upon arrival that makes the difference.

[anarazel]

There's now flights from SFO that leave to Frankfurt around 9pm local time - for me that already made a big difference. It allows me to at least sleep 2-3 hours instead of the usual 30 minutes in 5 minute chunks.

> As soon as I get to my hotel (around lunchtime), I take a nap of 3 hours or so. I don't let myself sleep beyond that. I then get up and do some activities. I have dinner at the regular local time and then go to sleep at the usual time in the evening.

Yea, I found that to be much better as well. It additionaly seems to help tremendously to do an hour or two of sport after that nap. I feel being physically exhausted helps to get adjusted much quicker, because I sleep much deeper the following night. It's awfully hard to convince yourself to start tho.

EDIT: language

[AnimalMuppet]

That has worked for me as well (when going east). Getting up from that nap is brutally hard, though...