The Other Berlin - NYTimes.com Over the last decade, as East Berlin has risen to become Europe's most fertile breeding ground of cool, West Berlin has languished. By the mid-2000s, once-bustling squares and boulevards were shadows of their glamorous former selves. But the winds of change have shifted. Construction cranes now swing over Breitscheidplatz, and the streets buzz with shoppers and diners. "The city is reorienting itself to the west," says Stefanie Hering, who will open a flagship store for her porcelain design company, Hering Berlin, in the new Waldorf-Astoria hotel building this spring. The Waldorf, occupying a new high-rise steps from the Zoo station, is only the beginning. Recently opened on the main boulevard Kurfürstendamm, Haus Cumberland is a restored hotel from the early 1900s that houses several welcome arrivals, among them Grosz - a coffeehouse and restaurant evoking 1920s Berlin. Elsewhere, the former Danish Embassy has been turned into Das Stue hotel. And planned for this fall are a 25hours hotel by the German designer Werner Aisslinger, and an outpost by the culty east-side fashion pioneer Andreas Murkudis. Apple is reportedly coming to the Ku'damm, and even the Gedächtniskirche, a West Berlin landmark whose spire was lopped-off in the war, is getting its long-overdue restoration. "For years they said that something would happen," says Michel Würthle, owner of the legendary - and now trendy again - Paris Bar. Suddenly the boom is here.