After two years it was time again for a private fan gathering of Jackie’s fans in Germany. The memories from the first fan gathering, in June 2007, were only very nice ones and that’s why the two German fans Ute and Silke talked once again about a possibility for another one, when they met in December 2008.

Mails crossed the net, plans and ideas for a new fan gathering were discussed, and finally a good date was chosen: the weekend of 13th /14th June, 2009. The first invitation e-mails to 14 different fans in 5 countries were sent out; in the mean time Ute and Silke became busy with the preparations. This fan gathering wasn’t only meant to spend a nice time together but also to support Jackie’s Build a School Project at the same time.

Finally 9 fans from three countries wanted to participate in this fan gathering: Kitty from The Netherlands, Dagmar from Slovak Republic and Sabine, Kerstin, Ingrid, Sandy, Jutta, Ute and Silke from Germany. Some of them had already met at other events but some of them had never met before. Unfortunately one fan (Gail from the UK) could not participate and had to cancel a short time before the date. But she sent money and a t-shirt for the planned auction. Thorsten from Germany also couldn’t come but he sent some items for the auction, too. Another fan from Austria (Nina), couldn't join us that weekend but she sent money for the planned common donation.

And here is the report from this weekend:

On Friday, June 12th Silke travelled across Germany to meet up with Ute and they both made the final preparations for the weekend. In the late afternoon of this day the first fan would arrive by train: Kitty from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We three had a nice afternoon and had our dinner at an Italian restaurant. Later we chatted about our favourite themes and watched a documentary about Jackie. We went to bed … well… only in the very early hours of the morning.  
The only thing we were still afraid of was the weather, because it still was very windy and a little bit too cool on that day. Would we be lucky and the weather would change into a nicer one, like it was announced by the weather forecast?

On Saturday, June 13th the fan gathering finally began. We got what we wished for, the sun was shining since the morning and it really was becoming a great day. We all would meet up at the city centre of Limburg on the river Lahn, which is located nearby Ute’s home village Molsberg. After all remaining fans had arrived by train or by car; we all went to an Asian restaurant. Here we enjoyed our lunch in the Chinese way, which means to order different kinds of food and to share it all together. It was delicious and the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Mingh, did a great job!

After that it was time for a walk. The city centre of Limburg is very nice; there are a lot of well renovated historic houses, small alleys and many shops. For a while we walked across the streets, visited the cathedral, a castle and other places and were every time again amazed and surprised by the beauty of the city.

We had to finish our sightseeing after a while because it was time to return for another highlight of the day. This was a visit at the best Italian ice cream parlour outside of Italy with the name “Lazzaris”. They offer handmade Italian ice cream here for already 50 years, meanwhile in the third generation. If you ever will have the possibility to taste their ice cream, you never will regret it!

Now it was time to jump into the cars and to drive to Ute’s home in Molsberg. After everybody had “checked in”, we all gathered around a big table in front of the house and continued with talking, looking at photos, sharing memories from Hong Kong and Beijing and so on. We did share many amazing stories as well, were giggling many times and our cameras were almost continuously working. Two other nice guys joined us: a Jackie’s doll and K C’s twin. Beside Ute’s dog Kelvin they were the only men who spent this weekend with us.

But Ute and Silke also wanted to test the fans’ knowledge about their favourite actor Jackie in a quiz with 10 questions from various themes. There were questions like for example:

To name only a few. Here you can see the fans’ brains working.

The winner and the runner ups got some small presents, of course in connection with Jackie. Later we all had our dinner in front of the house and continued chatting there until the sunset. Now we exchanged from outside to inside the house and watched Jackie’s movie The Forbidden Kingdom. After this great movie was finished, it finally was time to go to bed. Good night!

On Sunday, June 14th the weather kept again its promise and even in the morning the sun was shining. So we could enjoy our breakfast again in front of Ute’s house. Our two guys joined us as well again. And another fan was joining the fun also: finally Sabine from Reinheim arrived; she had to attend an event with her choir the day before.

After the looooong breakfast it was time for the next point on our agenda: a raffle! The prizes for this raffle were all collected and sponsored by Ute and Silke and of course they all were in connection with Jackie. There were 38 raffle tickets to be sold, you could win for example: mouse pads, stamps, DVD’s, CD’s, magnets, notebooks, photos and some other items. Each raffle ticket was sold for 5 Euro but all the proceeds would go to the school project. At the end all tickets were sold and everybody was happy with their prizes.

But the fundraising continued now with a small auction. There we sold for example: t-shirts, a mug, a bandana, an autographed photo, books from JC Adventures and Shanghai Knights, press kits from Mr. Nice Guy and Who Am I?, a hat from 80 Days, a base cap from New Police Story and many movie posters from different films. The auction was very successful and all the items were sold! When the auction was finished every one of the participants even gave some more money as their donation. Afterwards Silke counted all the bills and coins from the money box – and became speechless for a moment. There was lying on the table a total of 520 Euro (~ 717 US $)!!! That was almost unbelievable because nobody had expected such a high amount! Everybody was very happy and we all would give a lot to tell that to Jackie personally. We were sure he also would be very happy about it!

The time passed by too fast and when the lunch was prepared and finished, it was already time for the first of us to leave the fan gathering to catch the train back home One after another had to leave and finally only Kitty, Ute and Silke remained. Kitty and Silke went finally home on Monday morning. It wasn’t easy to say good-bye again after such a great time to all the new and old friends.

At last we will explain how we came up with the title of our report. At first we considered us lucky that we found each other because of our common interest in Jackie, his movies, his music and his inspiration for so many things. Secondly we were very lucky with the weather at the weekend. Only the two days of our fan gathering it was sunny and warm between quite cool, windy and even rainy days before and afterwards. Someone very special certainly took care of us!  

We all want to thank Jackie very much, that he brought us together. We spent a wonderful weekend all together and became real friends. Often our thoughts flew away to greet Jackie and Hong Kong. We are already sure, that we will do something like that again.

With much love
Dagmar, Ingrid, Jutta, Kerstin, Kitty, Sabine, Sandy, Silke and Ute

 

 

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