Heino's Cafe

Yes, dreams really come true, but not just in Disney World. When we first signed up to go on this year's bus tour, Elmar was very happy to see that Heino's Rathaus Cafe was on the list of stops. He was hoping that Heino would be there, but no promises were made. Many, many years ago Heino performed in Milwaukee and Elmar took pictures of me with Heino. However, it was back in the days of using film and the film was filled up before Elmar could get a picture of him and Heino. Well, as you can see from the picture on this page, Elmar got that picture with Heino.

Heino and his lovely wife, Hannelore, were very gracious and Hannelore even welcomed our group in English. We had our own room for our 50+ people that were on this tour and Heino when to each person and personnally handed them an autographed picture postcard. This gave everyone the opportunity to speak with him or have their picture taken with him. You only needed to ask and he happily posed for that picture.

We were served the famous Heino Hazelnut Torte. If you look closely at the white chocolate wafers that decorate the torte, you can see Heino's image on them. Heino had studied to be a baker before he became a singer and grew into the super star he is today.

The pictures for the first day of our fabulous 2 week trip are in a Picasa album. I am putting my pictures out here so that other members of the tour can also download some of the pictures I took on the trip and perhaps they can send me some of their pictures and I can put them out here for all of us to share. If you click on the image below, you can go directly to the Picasa album to see that first day.

This fabulous meeting with Heino happened on our first full day in Germany, but the day before we were on the go as soon as we landed and you will see those pictures in this album too. One of the very first things we did was have a tour of the Asbach distillery, a short distance from our hotel. And then a short stop at the Niederwalddenkmal. We even had a boat ride down the Rhein and a glimpse of the Loreley. In the evening Albert Dormann played for our dancing pleasure. on May 6. On May 7, when we went to Bad Muenstereifel to vist Heino's Rathaus Cafe, but in the evening we had a great dinner at the Ruedesheim Lindenwirt where we had the famous Rudesheimer coffee (it has Asbach Uralt in it & the light it & quickly put it out with whipping cream.

Also, that evening a new friend came to visit us. Andrea Ney is the president of the Axel Becker Fan Club " Amore Amore" and takes care of all the webmaster duties. We have been corresponding since last December when Elmar & I went to see Axel Becker in Cleveland for one of Gisela's Christmas shows. It was so nice to meet Andrea, face-to-face. She is a very nice lady, who has a great love for music.

If you were on this trip with us and would like one of the pictures here, just click on the right lower corner and go to the Picasa website to right click and do a save as or send me an e-mail and I can help you. Again a great big thank you goes to Gisela Lewis and Peter Matthai, who truly made this a trip to remember.