The KGB did construct such a town for use in training agents. The CIA probably did the same. I remember reading the memoirs of a Soviet agent defector who had to learn, for example, to hold his fork in his right hand and switch to his left when using his knife to cut his food. Otherwise he might stand out as a little bit “different”.
During WWII the German Gestapo searched for American spies by watching diners use the cutlery in that American style, whereas the European used the right hand to hold the knife and the left hand to hold the fork and then eat from the fork while in the left hand.
Red Nightmare (1962), katana wrote:
The KGB did construct such a town for use in training agents. The CIA probably did the same. I remember reading the memoirs of a Soviet agent defector who had to learn, for example, to hold his fork in his right hand and switch to his left when using his knife to cut his food. Otherwise he might stand out as a little bit “different”.
In film that dinning mannerism depiction was shown in “The Great Escape”. With the late James Gardner playing the American POW escaspee and “Telly Savalas playing the role of a Gestapo agent. Savalas towering over Gardner while seated at a table in a restauant as he was shoveling food in his mouth with his right hand looks up to see Savalas smiling, shaking a no no with his finger.
I’m left-handed. I never switched back and forth, and my mother never called attention to it. I didn’t even notice that everyone was doing that until I was at a picnic at the age of eight. Some Dutch people were there, and they were amused at all the Americans switching back and forth.