MuseumsQuartier and Gelateria Hoher Markt on Day Two in Vienna
In Vienna, you don’t have to stray too far from the Ringstrasse to find some of the city’s greatest art museums. MuseumsQuartier, for example, is just a block from the Burgring tram stop. True to its name, it is not a museum in itself, but series of buildings with a courtyard in its center around which various museums have been built.
The museum we wanted to see was the Leopold Museum, with its excellent collections of the art of Viennese artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. We couldn’t visit Vienna and not see as much of the works of those geniuses as possible, and the Leopold Museum would be our first chance to experience their work.
Leopold Museum
The Leopold Museum building is rather nondescript, a box with a staircase alongside of it, but inside there is some pretty powerful medicine. The main temporary exhibit focussed on Wally Neuzil, one of Schiele’s muses and models who inspired him to create the portraits of dynamic women (usually based on her) for which we know him today. The exhibit put their collaboration into context, displaying for example the paintings he did of the town of Cesky Krumlov during the time the two lived there. And of course the highlight of that exhibit was the painting of Neuzil herself, a depiction of which you can see to the left of the museum’s sign above.
Another focus of the Leopold Museum is the Vienna 1900 permanent exhibition, which seeks to convey the richness of the artistic activity that was taking place in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. Included are several major pieces by Klimt, and work by other artists as well.
After we had spent a few hours exploring three of the five floors of artworks in the museum, we took a break to have lunch in the museum’s cafe, which is of course called the Leopold Cafe. There were three people working there, but it was busy, and only one of them, a woman, spoke any English it seemed. So when we had complex questions, we had to wait for her to be free to answer them.
Luckily, the system I have described previously for identifying allergens was used on the menu at this restaurant (although they made some mistakes on the handwritten day’s specials). I could’ve gone for bacon and eggs, but instead I decided to go totally vegan and get a falafel platter.
Falafel Platter in Leopold Museum Cafe
This was one of the best choices I made in any restaurant in Vienna, because this was one of the best meals I had that whole week. And in ordering vegan, I was certainly not “settling” for a lesser meal. From the turmeric accented hummus to the soy yogurt sauce and the pickled beets to the falafel themselves, this was a very very good meal. And I appreciated the fact that portion-wise, it was just the right amount of food. OK, I did give away a couple of my olives – I am not that into calamata olives, and I know Therese loves them, so I gave them to her. But otherwise, I loved this dish.
After lunch, we finished up at the Leopold Museum, although what we saw on the last floor or two (19th century/Napoleonic era Biedermaier paintings) were not to me nearly as impressive as the Schiele and Klimt works we had seen earlier.
When we left the Leopold Museum, the sweltering heat was once again at its height. We wanted to get across town to have a break with some ice cream, but I thought it would be good to cut our journey in half by taking the U-bahn, Vienna’s subway, one stop. So we walked one block, hopped on the U-bahn, went one stop, and that was that.
From the Herrengasse Ubahn stop, it was just a couple blocks to the Am Hof square, then to Judenplatz, and finally Hoher Markt (I told you we ended up spending a lot of time walking through Hoher Markt). There was a vegan ice cream shop that I had heard about, but it was off the beaten path, out near the Naschmarkt, so my judgement was to visit the Gelateria Hoher Markt, which got high marks, instead.
Gelateria Hoher Markt
This gelateria has a menu which, believe it or not, uses the letter symbols. You would think, well gee, most of them would have dairy in them, and therefore necessitate a G. But it is more complicated than that. Some of their specialty ice cream concoctions include alcohol (sparkling champagne or a liqueur) and therefore include sulfites – so they have the letter O after them. And Faith, our friend who was traveling with us, is allergic to sulfites, so she needed to know about this! Therefore, while I initially was thinking that this system is not needed for a gelateria, I was proven dead wrong!
Of course, I was mainly interested in their menu of sorbets. And looking at the flavor list on the menu, I could easily pick out the sorbets – they were the ones with no letters after them.
Gelateria Hoher Markt Menu
After a consultation of the menu, and a question to verify the English meaning of one of the flavors, I picked Erdbeer, Heidelbeer and Zitrone (strawberry, blueberry and lemon).
My Three Scoops of Sobertto at Gelateria Hoher Markt
Wow. The best sorbet I have ever tasted. Incredible intense tangy flavor, and perfectly silky smooth creamy texture. If I hadn’t seen on the menu (and confirmed with the waitress) that these were sorbets, I would’ve sworn they were ice cream. The texture was that perfect.
For dinner that night, Therese chose for us. We had passed the sausage stand on Wipplingerstrasse, not far from the Borse (stock exchange) on our way back and forth to our hotel, and she thought, why not make it easy and just get some Currywurst at the sausage stand? So that’s what we did. We walked the two blocks from our hotel, ordered our sausage with curry powder and ketchup, and gobbled it up while standing right there. It was quick, it was cheap, and it was a pleasantly authentic Vienna street food experience. Anthony Bourdain would have been very proud of us.
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