Close, I think a mix of the original you posted and the one shown now would be perfect. Right now it's almost too much, but I still like it better than the original.
**edit** actually if you could post the original again, i want to demonstrate what i was thinking. I use paint shop pro as well as photoshop, and PSP has a gamma correction setting that is far superior to brightness / contrast. It brightens / darkens based on original intensity rather than uniformly. I think you could get the same results using levels, but I'm not that good at that yet.