  We report on a dedicated effort to identify and study metal-poor stars
strongly enhanced in r-process elements ([r/Fe] > 1 dex; hereafter r-II stars),
the Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star survey (HERES). Moderate-resolution
(~2A) follow-up spectroscopy has been obtained for metal-poor giant candidates
selected from the Hamburg/ESO objective-prism survey (HES) as well as the HK
survey to identify sharp-lined stars with [Fe/H] < -2.5dex. For several hundred
confirmed metal-poor giants brighter than B~16.5mag (most of them from the
HES), ``snapshot'' spectra (R~20,000; S/N~30 per pixel) are being obtained with
VLT/UVES, with the main aim of finding the 2-3% r-II stars expected to be among
them. These are studied in detail by means of higher resolution and higher S/N
spectra. In this paper we describe a pilot study based on a set of 35 stars,
including 23 from the HK survey, 8 from the HES, and 4 comparison stars. We
discovered two new r-II stars, CS29497-004 ([Eu/Fe] = 1.64 +/- 0.22) and
CS29491-069 ([Eu/Fe] = 1.08 +/- 0.23). A first abundance analysis of
CS29497-004 yields that its abundances of Ba to Dy are on average enhanced by
1.5dex with respect to iron and the Sun and match a scaled solar r-process
pattern well, while Th is underabundant relative to that pattern by 0.3dex,
which we attribute to radioactive decay. That is, CS29497-004 seems not to
belong to the class of r-process enhanced stars displaying an ``actinide
boost'', like CS31082-001 (Hill et al. 2002), or CS30306-132 (Honda et al.
2004b). The abundance pattern agrees well with predictions of the
phenomenological model of Qian & Wasserburg.
