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Andreas Kolbe, webmaster

This one is weired... to understand, how I first got in contact with Annika I need to go back a little bit in time...

In 1997 Roland, a very good friend of mine, died. He simply collapsed during a jogging session, probably because of an arrythmia caused by an undiagnosed heart defect. All his friends back then were mourning for him. It was very quickly after his death, that all of us tried whatever we could, to prevent his life from just vanishing. We even grabbed his personal homepage, that he had at CompuServe and since then I host it on my server at andyk.com/hespe . His homepage features information on his study of architecture, dancing courses and the european radio scene.

I managed a substitute email-account, that has an autoresponder attached, to inform people mailing to him of his death. I get copies of these mails to make shure, everything is fine. Occasionally there are some mails coming in, but most of it is the usual SPAM, and those few, that aren't have no need for to be answered by me - the automatic response sent says everthing needed.

Thus so far. And then came Sunday, November 7th, 2004 around midday, when I was sitting in front of my computer. An email came in for Roland's email-address. It read something like this:

Hi, this is Annika, I'm 14 years old and got to your homepage by accident whilst looking for infos on architecture studies. By now, I don't know someone studying architecture and I thought, you might tell me something for it's my dream to become an architect.

Anni on her 15th birthday

Oh my gosh! was my first thought. There's this little girl and now she receives an automatic (not very personal or sensitive phrased) message - leaving her somewhat alone with Roland's death! I quickly managed a personal answer by myself explaining a little more, than the autoresponder does.

It was very fast, that Anni responded and we very soon realized, that we enjoyed writing each other. Anni even managed to convince me of using ICQ to chat with her (not that I would hate chatting, but before I used MSN Messenger).

In the meantime I know, that she's no little girl, but a very clever and nice young woman. It's really fun and interesting to chat or write with her!