Döner meat is cooked on a large rotating stick surrounded by ovens, but you can also get your meal with falafel, which is made from ground chickpeas that get packed into balls and fried. The Döner meat furthest away from the stick in the middle cooks first, and is shaved off of the stick with a special shaving machine.
The Mensa, and many Germans, are very concerned with how their food impacts the environment around them. This means that they think very sustainably when they plan and make their food. On many days, one of the options for a side is the main course from the day before to avoid food waste. This is usually very exciting if I enjoyed the meal from the day before (and not as exciting when it wasn’t my favorite). After you are done eating, you must also separate all of the different waste you have into different categories to be disposed of properly, including compost, plastic, paper, and restmüll (waste), which is what ends up in the landfill.
One last thing! While pudding in Germany and the U.S. are not that different, the way they have been eating it here lately has been quite different. If you have seen the TikTok trends where folks meet in a park and have contests like “performative male contest” or “Taylor Swift lookalike contest,” you'll be interested to know that Germans have been doing something somewhat similar but a bit odder. Pudding mit Gabel essen, or "eating pudding with a fork," has become a very popular German trend. A few weeks ago I went to the park with my friends armed with a fork and a pudding, with about 300 people who did the same.
