We are back on Friedrichstrasse, the same street where we started our tour. Located on the corner of this street and Zimmerstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie is a former border crossing between East and West Berlin and now one of the city’s top tourist destinations. It was named “Charlie” due to the use of the phonetic alphabet to name checkpoints along the Berlin Wall – Checkpoint Alpha was at Helmstedt, and Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden. Checkpoint Charlie was the site of a standoff between American and Soviet tanks in nineteen hundred and sixty-one and was a popular spot for East Berliners to attempt to escape to the West. A small private museum located on Friedrichstrasse tells the tale of some of those escape attempts, including those that were successful, and those that were not. US President John F. Kennedy visited Checkpoint Charlie in June nineteen hundred and sixty-three, just five months before he was assassinated in Dallas. Checkpoint Charlie was also a popular location for East Germans to attempt to escape to the West. One successful escape saw an Austrian named Heinz Meixner sneak his East German girlfriend and her mother across the border by lowering the windshield on a rented Austin-Healey convertible and speeding underneath the checkpoint’s vehicle barrier. The East German authorities responded by adding steel bars to the crossing. In another escape, US serviceman Eric Yaw risked a grave Cold War escalation by helping an East German father and daughter escape through Checkpoint Charlie in the trunk of his vehicle. As one of Berlin’s most famous tourist attractions, Checkpoint Charlie has featured in numerous movies and TV shows, including the James Bond film Octopussy and the two thousand fifteen blockbuster Bridge of Spies. Checkpoint Charlie closed in nineteen hundred and ninety, a few months after the Berlin Wall came down. Feel free to take a photo at the Checkpoint Charlie booth – the one you are looking at is a replica; the original booth is now displayed in the Allied Museum. Our walking tour through Berlin’s Second World War and Cold War history is now at an end. If you are interested in discovering more, there are many other sites you can visit by making use of Berlin’s metro. The East Side Gallery section of the Berlin Wall is home to the iconic mural depicting Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and East German General Secretary Erich Honecker engaging in a loving kiss. You may also wish to visit the Berlin Wall Memorial, located in the north of the city, on Bernauer Strasse. I strongly recommend you visit this memorial, as it is one of Berlin’s most important sites. If you do wish to visit, I suggest taking the U6 metro line from Kochstrasse (Checkpoint Charlie) to Naturkundemuseum, then walking ten minutes to the Berlin Wall Memorial. I’ve included a bonus section of the tour for those who wish to find out more about the memorial. I hope you have enjoyed today’s tour and learned plenty about the history of Berlin. Although it has experienced a rough and turbulent history, it is a testament to the resilience of the German people that Berlin is today the thriving capital of one of the world’s great democracies. Danke schön, und auf Wiedersehen.