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in the hall?”
    “Who knows, princess?”
    McNeighbor looked at her thoughtfully. He slowly lifted his hand, leaned in, and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. Then he kissed her. Just because.
    First he kissed her a little tentatively, as though he actually expected her to object, and then passionately. And above all, he kissed her extremely well. In the blink of an eye, they found themselves in the state of undress in which they had made their first acquaintance, and Zoe was sitting on McNeighbor’s lap, her legs crossed around his back. It was eight o’clock in the morning.
    Thank you, dear Universe, for the divine inspiration to put on lace underwear , Zoe thought.

    Later, Zoe attributed further events to certain neurological deficits that may have had something to do with sleep deprivation and the fact that she had half a bottle of champagne inside her. And that McNeighbor’s tongue could perform incredible acrobatics on her bare skin. And that he smelled like seawater, freshly mown grass, and sandalwood. And that she had whispered things in his ear that would get the average American in the Midwest arrested if said aloud in public. And that Zoe had simply fallen asleep after her one-morning-stand, before she could even ask McNeighbor who he actually was, where he came from, what he did for a living, why he had suddenly kissed her . . . and whatever questions journalists like her asked, when they weren’t having wild Sunday-morning sex with a stranger.
    Right before Zoe had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, she thought about what Carrie Bradshaw had said about New York City being all about sex. In Zoe’s experience so far, Carrie was right on the money.
    When Zoe woke up again, she was lying carefully covered in her bed, and McNeighbor was gone. Her cell phone pinged. Al had written back.
Seat 47A? In the airplane?
No, my neighbor. Apartment 47.
HOW delicious is he?
You mean WAS he.
Don’t tell me you . . .
McDreamy delicious.
No way! Go for it, girl! That’s what I call a new you.
Who would have guessed?
But what about your resolutions? Focusing on your career, no relationships with men, and all that?
A girl has a right to change her mind! Besides, I’m not planning to marry him.
You mean friends with benefits?
Friends with what?
    Al was always so damn well informed about these cool American catchphrases. They popped out of her mouth so casually at cocktail evenings or dinner parties in Berlin. Everyone always pretended to know exactly what the phrases meant and acted like they weren’t the least bit impressed, but of course they were. They all ran to the powder room immediately to secretly Google things like “oversexed and underfucked,” “early adopters,” or “bromance” on their phones.
Friends with benefits are friends who can sleep together, without having claims on anything else.
Except for good sex?
Except for good sex!
Brilliant concept! And in complete compliance with bathroom mirror resolutions!

4
    Some people need a double-decker bus tour with a trilingual tour guide to discover a new city. Some buy tickets for a yellow amphibious vehicle called a Duck, and conquer a city by water and land. Others begin at the highest point in the city—the Eiffel Tower, for example—to get an overview from above.
    Zoe Schuhmacher had her own unique way of getting to know a city: She chose the longest street that stretched all the way across the city she wanted to explore, and drove, walked, or biked its entire length while observing the people. It was her opinion that the people and their fashion whims set the fundamental mood of the city. The blow-dried, perpetually tanned, air-kissing society ladies of Munich, for example, or the permanently cool, Barbour-jacket-wearing women of Hamburg, who were one step closer to the traditional ladies of London. Or the fashionable native Berliners, who still acted as though they were living in a city surrounded by a wall—except the enemy was no