Day 1 (by Sarah)

Day One was essentially just a continuation of the day before. I say this because we had a 9.5 hour flight followed by a 1 hour flight. Although getting onto the 1 hour flight wasn't as easy as it sounds; we missed our connection from Frankfurt to Berlin, so we had to rearrange the tickets and wait at the airport until the next plane was here. A cool thing that happened on the next plane was that there was another EF tour group on the plane, so we were able to talk to them and find out what kind of trip they were going on.
Once we got to Berlin we got onto the bus and got to see the rest of our tour group for the first time. The rest of the group consists of two different groups from Georgia: one from the northern part and one from the southern.
The first place we visited was Alexander Platz. It was really neat because at Easter time, the entire square was covered in little shops, merchants, and rides. Also, near Alexander Platz there was the TV Tower, which is a giant tower with a sphere towards the top. The most interesting thing that I learned about the tower was that it's the tallest freestanding structure in Berlin, and that the Germans were the first to create a lot of the ideas in television. But my favorite thing in the square was the fact that they had Starbucks right underneath the TV Tower.
Dinner was really sketchy; we went to the top of a department store and then somehow wound up at a restaurant. Surprisingly though, they had good food. There were a lot of vegetables and these weird meatball things. None of us were quite sure what the meat was, but they were good either way.
Once it was darker, we went to the remains of the Berlin Wall. I thought it was really cool because the East side had all of these different paintings on it. That was sort of interesting to me, because that side used to be the side that was completely bare. There were so many different artistic interpretations on the wall, varying from paintings about freeing Tibet to propaganda messages from the Cold War.
This day was pretty much one of the longest days of my life, although it was a pretty good one. From being on a plane for almost 11 hours to seeing the Berlin Wall, I feel like it was an easy and successful way to start the trip.