Cultural,cuisine.... and cakes

one of the night sights in Vienna

oberlaa cafe

Summer by Arcimboldo

My day has started very early today and I am very lucky as the sun is shinning brightly with the temperature around 7 degree Celcius. I have decided to start my day by walking to Naschmarkt. It is the biggest open air market in Vienna and you can find almost everything from exotic fruits to spices.... almost everything. I saw some durians, rambutan, mangis and I even bought half a kilo of buah mata kucing.

I later walked to the Kuntshistorisches Museum ( Fine Arts Museum). This is the treasure of Austria. The museum is located in one of the royal palaces and of course as the royal palace of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, it is definitely grandiose. I chose to see only the picture gallery which consists of the masterpieces of European paintings of the Italian, Flemming, Spanish,French and German starting from the 15th Century like Canaletto, Vermeer,Titan, Van Dyck, Durer to name a few.

I came here to see Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist who was the imperial court painter. He was the designer for weddings and tournaments for the Emperor (could he be called the wedding planner?). The most famous painting is entitled 'Summer' dated 1563. That painting is considered as 'strange' and comical to certain extent....take a look at the photo. The beauty of the paintings is so overwhelming especially with the Flemming paintings as big as more than 5x6 metres... like the painting of Frans Snyders with the theme of 'treasure of the sea'. That painting shows that how brilliant the artist was to paint 'still life' of belangkas,sturgeon,cuttlefish,lobsters.... i have counted and there are almost 30 types of sea creatures in that painting and they look so real, you can actually touch them! (the painting is almost 400 years old)

I left the museum with my heart filled with artistic emotions but I am ready for my..... cake adventure. I went to the Cafe Oberlaa... a historic cafe and I tried the schoko vanille torte which means chocolate cake with chocolate and vanilla mousse. Again the Austrian cake has won my heart and the taste of the light chocolate mousse together with the vanilla mousse filling really made me smile throughout the day.....