Greetings, Gerhard, and welcome to Tripatini! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find our site productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of Tripatini, you may want to take a moment to join several of our many groups which you may find of particular interest, such as Media Only, Germany, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Road Trip, Eating/Drinking the World, our German Language/Culture Club, and plenty of others covering many other topics and most destinations across Europe and the globe.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a green bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself and your writing/outlets.

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your English-speaking, travel-interested friends, family, colleagues, associates, and audience. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!).

Thanks much for joining us; we wish you a great rest of the holiday season and an outstanding start to 2010, and of course we look forward to seeing you online.

Cheers!