It's not a coincidence that the small cafe was given the name of the German capital: after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nicosia remains the only divided capital in the world.
Behind the cafe, lies "nobody's land" – the Green Line where UN troops patrol since 1974.
"United Nations Buffer Zone. No Unauthorised Entry," the sign on the rusty metal plates reads in English, Greek, and Turkish.
The zone of uninhabited derelict buildings, surrounded by a fence with Greek and Turkish flags on different sides, appeared after Turkish troops occupied the northern part of the island following local Greeks' attempt to make Cyprus part of Greece.
For the last three decades, the Green Line isolated Muslim Turkish Cypriots and Christian Greek Cypriots who had until then lived peacefully for centuries.
The situation changed in 2003 when an agreement was reached on the Mediterranean island to set up border checkpoints.
Nicosia-based sociologist Charis Pslatis says around 10,000 Turkish Cypriots who worked on the Greek side used to cross the border several years ago.
But the financial crisis that reached the island last year and hit it with renewed force this year, stopped their flow, and the southern part of Cyprus, which is part of the European Union, is no longer so attractive to Turkish Cypriots which have set up their own internationally-unrecognized state in the north.
"The number of Turkish Cypriots coming here has decreased dramatically," the sociologist from the University of Cyprus told Lithuanian journalists in Nicosia.
Crisis as opportunity
Greek Cypriots are worried about unemployment and emigration due to austerity measures taken in exchange for a 10-billion-euro credit to save the country's banking system.
Local economists believe Cyprus' economy my plummet as much as 10 percent this year and the next. In the long-term, the unification of the island may bring substantial benefit as it would help to eliminate restrictions stalling growth and would perhaps pave the way for the exploitation of recently discovered natural gas fields.
"Solving the problem, having some solution definitely is going to give an economic boost. There is some cost in the transition stage, but I think that middle and longer benefits are much greater," Cyprus economist Sofronis Clerides told BNS.
The solution of the Cypriot problem would help exploit recently discovered natural gas fields. The Aphrodite offshore gas field is estimated to contain 200 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
The Cypriot government rejects Turkish criticism that it should not extract gas until there's an agreement with the Turkish Cypriots in the north, and Nicosia is mulling building an LNG terminal for exports.
But some experts argue both sides would benefit more from a gas pipeline from Cyprus to Turkey, which seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
"We feel that this national wealth can be a catalyst for a resolution to the Cyprus problem," Cyprus' Minister of Energy, Commerce, Industry Yiorgos Lakkotrypis told BNS.
In his words, the stability is also very important to attract investments to the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.
New attempt in autumn
The last attempt to unify the island was made in 2004 when former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed a federation plan which subsequently failed after it was rejected by Greek Cypriots in a referendum. Unification supporters pin their hopes on recently-elected Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades who then backed the unification plan.
The Government of Cyprus says it won't be able to come to the negotiating table until October as all attention would be focused on salvaging the country's economy.
Some believe the recession might also change people's minds.
"Before the Annan plan, the Greek community thought we are poor and they are rich, and asked: "Why should we share our richness with them“? Now they saw that, in a short time, everything can change. Their richness became poorness in a moment," Turkish Cypriot Yusuf Toz, 57, living in the northern Nicosia told BNS.
Turkish ambition
The leaders of Turkey, which does not recognize the EU member state Republic of Cyprus and deploys over 30,000 troops in northern Cyprus, have also recently repeatedly said they see a chance to solve the Cyprus problem.
The resolution of the Cyprus issue may help Turkey resume EU accession talks and boost the country's ambitious role in the Middle Eastern region.
"For Turkey to play the role they want to play in the region, it has also to solve the Cyprus problem," former president of Cyprus George Vassiliou, an active supporter of the unification idea, said.
The international community considers the northern part of the island an occupied territory.
