Genau!

I was searching Google for an explanation of why Austrians put corn on their pizza when I found this simply hilarious blog about living as an American in the German-speaking world. Although I've found that Austrians actually eat slower than Americans, I still found the following post about sharing meals with German speakers to really hit the nail on the head.

The cards are stacked against you in this for the following 2 reasons:

1. You likely haven’t mastered the super-efficient German style of eating, whereby you scoop everything onto your fork in your left hand with your knife that’s in your right hand. Maybe you are becoming adept at using the fork with your left hand and are gaining speed, but it won’t be enough.
2. You must constantly try to remember the gender of every noun you want to say, then figure out whether the prepositions you want to use require the accusative, dative, or genitive case. Then you have to match the gender with the case to figure out the needed definite article in a table in your head you learned in German class, and you are almost there. Now you just have to figure out the adjective ending based on the definite article and you have part of the sentence you want to say completed. Now figure out where the verbs go in the sentence, conjugate and you are ready to add your mustard* to the conversation. Unfortunately by the time you have your witty sentence about the reality show constructed in your head, the topic has already moved on to the Bundesliga.

Once again its going to be one of those days where the only thing you said all lunch long was genau one time, and your colleagues are still going to have to wait for the slow American to finish lunch.

* An actual expression in German! Nothing tops "It's sausage to me," which means it doesn't matter, and "I have a male cat," which means you're hungover, but it's still pretty funny.