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 Breitscheidplat , and the streets bu 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 oo 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 Gros — 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.”
T Maga ine: The Other Berlin
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