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TMP stu­dents get to know dishes from around the world by cook­ing and shar­ing

Chi­na, Bel­gium, Italy, Greece, Iran, Ma­lay­sia, Rus­sia, Japan, Tune­sia, Tur­key, Ba­varia, these are only a few of the coun­tries of origin of the stu­dents in the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “The­oreti­cal and Math­emat­ical Phys­ics” (TMP). In No­vem­ber, they met and pre­sented dishes from home.

Meet­ing on a week­end at the uni­versi­ty in a re­laxed at­mosphere and for once not only dis­cuss­ing quan­tum phys­ics, ele­men­tary parti­cles or dif­feren­tial ge­ometry, that was the intent of al­most 100 stu­dents in the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “The­oreti­cal and Math­emat­ical Phys­ics” in Mu­nich. It did not take long for the two stu­dent repre­senta­tives, the two elect­ed speakers of the TMP stu­dent body, to book Café Gum­bel, the stu­dent run café at LMU. They also creat­ed an online doc­ument for eve­ry­body to regis­ter and pro­pose a dish from their home coun­try they could pre­pare and con­trib­ute.

Green cab­bage, Sushi, Boeuf Bour­guinon – a color­ful mix

The list filled up quick­ly and one Sat­urday in No­vem­ber the first TMP Food Ex­change took place. A large buffet was filled with many dishes and drinks from all kinds of coun­tries. The vari­ous chefs had taken great care. There were clas­sics like Lasa­gna, Boeuf Bour­gui­gnon and green cab­bage, a tra­di­tional dish from north­ern Ger­many, vari­ous soups and salads and of course pret­zels and “Obatzter”. Even when all pots and plates were fin­ished, the event was not. Con­versa­tions and board games let most par­tici­pants stay well into the night.

Cur­rent TMP stu­dents come from 25 coun­tries from four conti­nents to Mu­nich to be­come re­searchers in theo­retical phys­ics and phys­ics relat­ed math­emat­ics. Con­versa­tion and teach­ing are con­duct­ed in Eng­lish and dur­ing the two years of the pro­gram, stu­dents not only learn about recent re­search topics in their sub­jects but as well about the inter­na­tion­ality of the global scien­tific com­muni­ty. Here, eve­ry­body brings their indi­vidual cul­tural up­bring­ing but joins a world-wide effort to tackle scien­tific prob­lems of uni­versal rele­vance.

Text: Rob­ert Helling, Coordina­tor of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram "The­oreti­cal und Math­emat­ical Phys­ics“