The Intrepid Fox among the undead

Last November (2006) our annual trip to London was about to begin. As usual we had everything well planned in advance. Basically our plan is always to head to best pub in London, The Intrepid Fox, drink some beers and see where else we could go to once the pub closes. This had been proven to be the best plan ever.This year Andi, Bertl and me went on the trip. Bertl had never before been to London so we promised to show him the sights, always telling him how great the Fox is :)
So on the 9th we arrived in London, looked for a place to stay at Kings Cross and headed off to show Bertl the sights (which included spending way too much time at Virgin and HMV, going through all the nice DVDs). When we were close to the Fox I wanted to take a quick peek at it in anticipation of the fun later that evening...

BUT.... THE HORROR!!!

The Fox was boarded up and we could clearly hear construction work going on inside. Right at that moment we (Andi & me) were devastated and at loss on how to spend our evenings at London.

Of course we found other places, especially the Purple T will stay forever in our memories. It's an east end pub located in a former financial institute and offers about ten different kinds of cider. The evening there was very strange and weird...

Well, anyway, we only learnt about the Intrepid Fox' true fate until after we returned to Vienna. Apparently the building was bought, the pub given a one month notice to get lost and now the whole building is going to get rebuilt into an apartment complex. Sad but true :(

But rejoice!!! Some help from google soon revealed that the Intrepid Fox was moving into a place in Denmark Street (near Tottenham Court Road). And tonight I looked again and it seems that it already reopened there. See this blog at http://www.lyingonthecovers.net/?p=113 written a month ago in December.
This finally made me sit down and write this piece (and that Bertl finally sent me the picture last weekend helped, too :))

So live in London makes sense once more and I hope the new fox is still as homely as the old one was!

Ouch!
Just got a very strange eMail from someone I don't know with the following text

Da mein Bruder Hannes nun nicht mehr unter uns ist, möchte ich hiermit
alle bitten, zum Begräbnis in Bruck an der Mur (Steiermark) zu kommen....

translated:

As my brother Hannes doesn't live anymore I want to ask everyone to come to his funeral...

At first I thought this is a very evil Spam Mail but reading on I found this is about someone real and at the end of the mail was a link to one of my favorite bands Roter Stern Silberstern.
Then it made click and I understood that the singer of this band, Hannes Strasser died. I'm very sad to hear this, more so because it seems he comitted suicide.
I first saw him with his old band Silbersterne in the club "Flex" right after I moved to Vienna and was at once "in love" with their music. On and off I saw other gigs of this band in Vienna and was at one time sad when it seemed that the band disbanded. But then I suddenly heard one of their songs played by Christina Stürmer, a very popular Austrian singer (she was part of the 2nd (?) Starmania cast). Apparently a lot of the old Silbersterne songs got sold (or given, I don't know) to Christina Stürmer and thus surprised me. "Geh nicht, wenn du kommst", "Engel fliegen einsam", "Disco", "E.T." und "Soll das wirklich Alles sein" are songs by Hannes.
Soon after (or before that, my mind is fuzzy on that) there was his new band "Roter Stern Silberstern" which I like very much as well. "Silbersterne" was very much alternative pop but RSSS rocked.
I only spoke once with Hannes, very briefly after a show with "Silbersterne" in the Gürtellokal Chelsea. But I liked him and I'm now very sad, the he no longer lives.

If anyone could give me a hint on how to get ahold of the old Silbersterne material, I'll be very happy.

I'm alive and kicking

Here we go!!! This is the beginning of a new era :)
You know me and you know I'm just lazy and couldn't get myself to write anything on my webpage for ages. To make it easier I thought I'd blog instead of having to change the code of my "News" page (not sure why I think it's easier, but well... whatever... I probably just wanted to blog).
So what is new?
In short, four years ago I moved in with Ruth and Leah, almost fourteen months ago Mia was born and in about a month I'll be an house owner in Vienna. I'll promise to show you pictures of that house once I have the keys to it!
On my homepage you can see all the old pictures that were on the site before and also you can see pictures of my little girls first twelve months of her life!

I promise (and this time I mean it) not to wait five years to put new photos up!

My homepage also got a little facelift and I hope you like it more. Now it's using css instead of frames.