Crossing the dead zone for coffee - a historic moment for divided island

Greek and Turkish friends reunite as barricades go from Nicosia's Ledra Street

A UN officer directs Cypriots crossing Ledra Street after its opening in Nicosia, April 3, 2008

Nicosia, the last divided capital in Europe

Ledra Street, the barricaded boulevard in the heart of the medieval-walled city that had symbolised the tensions and partition of the island for the best part of half a century, was no more

For Koula Hadjipieris and Hassan Chirakli the wall of hate came down at 10am yesterday

That's when Hadjipieris called her lifelong Turkish Cypriot friend and said: "I'm coming over."

For the first time in her 53 years she had traversed the length of Nicosia's most strategic boulevard; a street whose ability to attract violence even under colonial British rule had earned it the moniker Murder Mile

"It's so stupid that all this time we should be divided by a second-grade Berlin wall,"