Viennese Apfelstrudel (Apple Strudel) In NYC?!

On our recent excursion to the city, Mom and I visited the Neue Galerie. This is a very small art museum that specializes in early 20th century German and Austrian art/design. It is very close to the Metropolitan Museum of art.

1048 5th Ave & 86th St, NYC

Mom and I have been to this museum many many times, but on this occasion, we wanted to see the special Klimt exhibit that the Neue had put on. I'll be honest, until about 1.5 year ago, I didn't know much about Klimt and I did not know his art. I knew "The Kiss" of course, but that was it. That all changed my final semester at Bryn Mawr.

In the spring of my senior year, I took a class called "The Last Days of the Habsburg: Vienna 1900 and the End of an Empire." To quote Bryn Mawr's website, "360˚ Vienna is interdisciplinary in nature, and students will study works of art, architecture, design, literature, psychoanalysis, and pseudoscience. The seminar will feature critical discussions of visual culture, literary works, and psychoanalytic texts by artists and writers such as Sigmund Freud, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Robert Musil, Egon Schiele, Arthur Schnitzler, Otto Wagner, and Otto Weininger." As part of a requirement, my class spent spring break in Vienna and we also had a class trip to the Neue Galerie. This was definitely one of the coolest classes I had ever had the privilege to take!

Anyway, it was in the class that I learned in depth of Klimt and his work. All I can say is that I fell in love. There is something about his art that I love. Maybe it's the gold? Maybe it's his style? I can't really put my finger on it. All I know is that I really love the work of Gustav Klimt. As you can imagine, when I heard that the Neue Galerie was doing an exhibition just on Klimt, I HAD to go!

The exhibition was okay. A bit of a let down. They didn't really have a lot of his work and whatever was there was not super impressive. Clearly the Belvedere, in Vienna, did not want let go of Klimt's work! How tragic. It was kind of cool walking through the gallery (old and new) and trying to recount what I had learned in class. I can't claim to have remembered everything, I mean it has been about one year since I studied this stuff, but I hope she enjoyed her free tour and analysis! Still, I enjoyed myself immensely.

After several hours of touring the museum, it was time for a break... The Neue Galerie has two cafes: Cafe Sabarsky and Cafe Fledermaus. Both serve the same food, but the ambience is quite different. Sabarsky is modeled on an old school Viennese cafe, like Cafe Griensteidl, whereas, Cafe Fledermaus is much more art deco/modern.

Cafe Sabarsky

Cafe Fledermaus

Since there was a bit of a wait for Cafe Sabarsky, we decided to have "afternoon tea" at Cafe Fledermus. Although technically the mealtime was "afternoon tea," when in a Viennese coffeehouse, one should drink coffee, no? 

My mother enjoyed the "Sabarskytorte" (chocolate and rum cake) with a "Kaiser Melange" (fresh ground coffee with whipped cream), whilst I indulged with one of my all-time favorite pastries/sweets --- apfelstrudel! Since I don't really drink coffee, but still wanted to keep up appearance, I ordered the very delicious "Sabarsky Heibe Schokolade" (house made Viennese hot chocolate with whipped cream. Everything was so delicious! I felt like I was back in Vienna!