German Manners

So I've eaten with Germans a good handful of times now and am trying to learn to eat like them. It's an awful lot of work. While both "Continental" and "American" manners are both common in the US, I was raised on American manners. The clearest difference between the two styles is that I was raised to cut a bite of food and then set the knife down, switch the fork to my right hand then eat... a little tedious but it's a habit now. In Germany they use "Continental" manners which means the fork stays in the left hand and fork in the right so you end up eating left handed when using your knife. My impression of the style is that it looks like one is rushing and trying to shovel food into their mouth without taking the time to switch hands. They're impression of my manners is that it's childish. Children often have trouble eating with the left hand so they switch the fork back to the right. To the German defense, they by no means appear to be shoveling food; in fact it's quite the opposite.

Let's look at the example of pizza. Yes, they use utensils for that. I rarely see people use their hands for pizza. We American's probably look barbaric to them... Anyways, so you stick the fork in the pizza and then cut the piece off, you have a bite on your fork and you... well, I would expect you would eat it... but nope. First you inspect the bite. If it's too big you set it back down and cut a little off. If two small, then you cut a little more to add to the bit. Then, oh wait... there's a little bit of cheese hanging off, so the knife is used to set the cheese all on top of the fork. The little sauce that dripped on your plate is then spread onto the bite with the knife. The bite must then be shaped perfectly to fit in the mouth. The knife pushes, spreads and shapes the bite in motions resembling the motions of frosting a cake. When that is all said and done the knife probably has some food on it so that food is then wiped off onto the fork and the bite is taken. That's right, each bite is the perfect bite. The size and shape are ideal and the proportions of cheese to sauce to bread to pepperoni are perfect as well. Then the process starts all over again. With years of practice a German can execute that whole process from cutting to eating in less than 15 seconds! I've been practicing and hope to be able to demonstrate similar skill by the end of my time here.