Fast Food "Meal Prep" College Student Style (while in Germany)

College students are well known for being frugal and it makes sense. It's just common for them to attend college in a different city, or even country. Thus they have to manage living alone with only pocket money from their parents and in certain circumstances plus some extra money from part time work. But there are also some students who rely their life on part time work salary or scholarship fund. No matter what or how, college students are close with the routine of sparing money. One of the primary concerns in a college student's life is about food, right? It's a basic daily need. Some students choose to cook, some choose to eat instant food (long live instant noodle and microwaveable frozen food, right? hahaha...), some buy supermarket brand foods, some buy the "best before" or night discounted meals (you know, those supermarket or minimarket bento, bread or fried foods which sold with 50% discount at night), but the worst is of course when students have to skip meals in order to save money. Whichever methods college students choose to save money for meals, it's a form of creativity in the art of surviving this life.

Speaking of saving money for meals, I want to share one of my methods in managing food expenses during college time. For disclaimer, it might not be the cheapest way and fit for everyone, but this definitely makes sense for certain circumstances and still worth trying occasionally. This was back in 2013 when I was in my 5th semester at Padjadjaran University and I got a summer school scholarship in Bauhaus University Weimar Germany. Yes this was like 9 years ago but don't worry I did some research for the updated information, hahaha.. I stayed for about a month in Weimar which is located in the federal state Thuringia, eastern part of Germany. To save some money and when I got homesick, I actually brought a lot of instant food from home like instant noodle (comfort food!), instant soup, instant cereal drink and canned sardine. But I wasn't planning to solely base my meal only on it and didn't bring enough for a month too. I knew that I would have to cook and buy something from the canteen or the local shop. I want to try it too, anyway. One day I found this free magazine near the cafeteria. Well, to be honest, I took every free printed media available at the campus, hahaha.. Turns out this infood magazine provides monthly schedule of the canteen menu, with price included, in every canteen of state universities in Thuringia. All the meals are detailed with ingredients, allergen symbols and food preferences symbols (e.g. vegetarian). What a wonderful discovery in just a more or less 10 pages magazine.

The price information enables people to choose and calculate the monthly expense, nice! This information makes it easy to see which meals can fit our monthly budget and when we can eat at the canteen or not. When it doesn’t seem much promising to eat canteen’s meal for a whole month, we can combine it with what we can cook at home or with buying something convenient elsewhere as long as the budget fits our capability. That’s why I called it a fast food "meal prep" college student style. Yeah, just considered it as fast food, since it's already there ready to be served fast, right? Hahaha... It’s an “imperfect” meal prep because we don’t pre cook and divide our meals into containers for them to be reheated when we need it, but whatever hahaha.. However it still can be considered preparing and planning for a meal, right? Another variation in a way of living this life like this won’t hurt I guess. It’s just that this one needs more time with paper, pen and calculator maybe, hahaha.. So let's see how it worked.

This is how the magazine looks like. Unfortunately this is the last edition of it because they changed their service to digital format (obviously..). But don't worry, I'll show the digital format later.

The "Abschied vom infood" box is their farewell letter for the magazine reader

Here are how the table of menu looks like in the magazine. There are 4 kinds of meal, which actually I have no idea what the categorization based on here, but from what I saw at the Bauhaus Uni main canteen it would be somewhat categorized into prime meal (the most expensive one, because this kind always has real meat, fish, chicken, so no processed food and sometimes rice too), vegetarian meal (a bit expensive), standard meal (the cheapest, with processed food or minced beef) and the "today's offer" meal (this is just random, but if we're lucky enough we could get a good deal). Please note that the price written here are students price because this is a magazine published by an official organization that focused on student needs (food, housing, etc.) called Studentenwerk. There are various pricings available depending on the customers' status, which are student, employee and guest. The Thuringia cities included in this magazine are Erfurt, Jena, Weimar and Ilmenau. The meals provided by each city and each canteen are different. The meal schedule only available for weekdays during office hours. I know this kind of system is probably nothing new for many countries, but for me coming from Indonesia where the canteen system at our education institutions are totally different, this is a whole new exciting and useful experience.

My "table of menu, hahaha"

Since I was in Weimar, this is the table of menu I used. The Mensa am Park is the main canteen in Bauhaus University Weimar. I marked the meals that I'm interested in (read: the cheapest one €1,50, hahaha) with a checklist symbol. After that I reviewed the menu to sort it, resulting in the one with black marker big dot being the meals I was going for. Tbh, I don't really remember why there were only a few days chosen, but I guess it can be because sometimes I brought my own food, bought food elsewhere, ate somewhere with friends, or I got food from my friend. There are also circumstances when the menu was suddenly changed or I changed my mind (hahaha..) so I only bought the Beilagen (condiments) at the canteen which only cost 50-70 cents/item. But the point is there's a possibility to manage our budget by "organizing" our meal choices from the canteen’s table of the menu. Compared to regularly spending about €3-5/meal, as a student it would be nice if we could cut the budget into 1,5-2/meal, right? And in case we want or have to be so penny-pinching, for a big portion we could divide the meal into two portions. Just bring a food container from home, voila we already have something for dinner, no worries. I won’t go into details of budget calculation here, because first, our personal budget and needs are diverse, and second, I’m also a lazy as* in math tbh, hahaha.. I will show you guys some resources here, so you guys can go “play” planning meals with them by yourself. :) 

At the last page of the magazine (upper right) there's further information about the symbols

Now, we are living in the digital era where everything is few clicks away from our gadget. In order to follow the technology progress, it's obvious that the Studentenwerk and university will merged some of their printed service into digital platform. The meals schedule is no longer printed in the magazine and now completely only available both in internet and gadget apps. So how to access or check it? First, search for "mensa studentwerk" in google or any browser you use, then you can find the list of various Studentenwerk. If you're in Germany you can just search for "mensa studentenwerk (name of the city or federal state)"

 

So let's start with what we've already seen before in the magazine, Studentenwerk Thüringen. Here I'm going to show the german and english version of the page. I chose "Dining Halls and Cafeterias" or "Mensa/Cafeterien".

The German version of The Page

If we scroll down we can see these columns:
  

Choose the canteen/dining hall:

Mensa am Park  (where I used to go) is Dinning hall am Park so I chose that, choose the date, then there are also options for "type of allergens, additives and other ingredients" and also "type of meal"

For the "type of allergens, additives and other ingredients" column we can checklist the options based on our needs.   

When the choice is already made, it will show the menu available for the day. I guess because of covid the meal options are less than what the usual menu offers before pandemic.

in english

in german

Here's another example:

in english

in german

As we can see there are various pricing depends on the consumers' status which are students, employees and guests. Price for the guest is the most expensive price. But look at the student price, it's still under €3,00.

At the lower part of the page, there's further information about the symbol and labelling:

Other way to access it is from each canteen profile page and choose from the same box:

For mobile website they provided this page and here's how it looks:

As always, choose the canteen first.

Choose the language, day and date.

A page with the meal and further description for the symbols, allergens and labelling will be showed.
Click the arrow for further description of the meal.

This page will be showed, here the meal, price and description will be explained.

That was in Weimar, then how does it works in another city? Let's have a look at another example from Studentwerk Frankfurt and Berlin.

1.) Studentenwerk Frankfurt

For this example I'm going to change the language page into english. After opening the website of Studentenwerk Frankfurt, choose the Eat & Drink menu. And then from the pop-up options choose "Food menus". 

Next the option for canteen and cafeteria locations will be shown. I chose Mensa Casino at Goethe University Campus Westend because Mensa means bigger place and more food, hahaha..

The site will automatically show the menu for the entire week (during the weekdays and office hours). No price information for the employees and guests here, maybe the price is universal, but the prices are still quite affordable for students. There is soup that only costs €1,20 and unless you really want to eat meat or chicken there's a good deal of meal that costs under €3,00.

Further information about the symbols and labelling is available at he lower part of the page and 
click the "Übersicht der kennzeichnungspflichtigen Zusatzstoffe und Allergene".

What I like from Studentenwerk Frankfurt is the availability of information regarding the condiments and other food such as desserts and salads although unfortunately no price information included for this part. But condiments are usually not going to cost more than €1,50-2,00. In Weimar it costed €0,50 - €0,70/portion in year 2013, so the worst case scenario for now is that it will cost double for it, at least... or how do you think? Also somehow this part is not translated into english, hahaha..

 

Here's another example:

2.) Studentenwerk Berlin

Just like the previous point, I chose the english page for this one too. I clicked the "Dining Facilities" menu and chose the "Menue"

As always choose the location of the canteen or cafeteria:

So I chose one of the Mensa in Freie Universität Berlin.

The menu will be shown like this. It's already categorized completely from salads, main dishes, condiments to desserts. Price information is also categorized based on the customers' status which are Studierende/Beschäftigte/Gäste or Students/Employees/Guests (the detailed information is on the PDF file from the "download week plan" option). The meals here are very affordable, aren't they? In student prices the main dishes are under €3,00 for a fish meal and under €2,00 for vegetarian meal. On the other hand the prices for employee and guest are double the student's price. Oh look, the condiments are under €1,00, right?

If we scroll down the page, we could find "Additives", "Allergens" and "Pictogram" menu which will give us further information about each matter. Just click each arrow to open it.

To make the information more handy there's a "download week plan" option at the upper left side. A PDF file is ready to be downloaded so we can read the menu anywhere anytime offline. Here's how the PDF looks like.

The canteen foods, despite not always being the healthiest food ever, are an affordable and "easy access" meal for students, so if we could know everything in advance it would be really convenient. We could also check what kind of food it is, what kind of sauce compliments the meal, how spicy it would be, is it halal or kosher, is it worth the price, etc. to save us from future discomfort. Doesn’t it feel safe knowing that our monthly meal plan and budget is “secured” beforehand? For me, I felt relieved when I found something affordable but with clear and detailed information like this one. For students living far away from home, this will be helpful and gives more possibility to have more financial stability during their study. I hope this information could be useful for anyone who needs it.