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clever, because Zoe was certain any woman would rather die than voluntarily sit in one of the three greasy barbershop chairs in full view of thousands of commuters. Nevertheless, this hole-in-the-wall had its own kind of shabby charm, like the old black-and-white photos of the roller coaster at Coney Island that she’d recently seen in a German magazine. Zoe paused, set her digital camera to black-and-white, and took a picture for her blog. Then she poked her head inside.
    “Hi! Not much going on today, is there?” she said to the lonely shopkeeper. He was sitting in one of the barbershop chairs with his feet on the footrest, under the mirror, looking bored. He looked up from his copy of the New York Post .
    “We don’t cut women,” he replied. Zoe did a double-take at his grammar, which she hadn’t learned in her English classes. Then she got it, and nodded. It would make a fantastic caption for her photo in the blog, she realized happily, quickly jotting down a note to herself: “We don’t cut women.”
    When she got down into the subway station, she bought a MetroCard and approached the platform, which was full of tourists. There were countless people with Nikon cameras hanging around their necks and jean jackets tied around their hips, fighting to refold city maps before they got on the train.
    The travelers pushed their way onto the 1 train as soon as it stopped in the station. Once Zoe managed to get in, a man kindly stood up and offered her his seat.
    “Please go ahead,” he said.
    Zoe was astounded. She wasn’t sure how to interpret this gesture. Was he trying to pick her up or something? She sat down hesitantly. “Thank you.”
    “I’m getting off at the next stop, anyway,” the man said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to give up your seat for someone. Well, maybe it was, in a country like this. In Germany, where even people who were on vacation set their alarms for six in the morning to reserve the best lounge chairs at the pool, it was almost unthinkable.
    As the signal chimed to announce the doors were closing, a woman came hurtling down the platform, desperate to get on the train. “Hold the door! Hold the door!” she shouted. The man who’d just given his seat up for Zoe valiantly threw himself between the closing doors to pry them open and let the woman on board.
    Now there’s going to be trouble , Zoe thought, already imagining the response. “Holding the doors is forbidden! Didn’t you know that?” or “Now the train will be late because of you!” Not to mention “She should have left home two minutes earlier.” Those would all have been typical reactions in Germany. Alles Verboten!
    But nothing like that happened. The general consensus in a New York subway car seemed to be somewhere between “I don’t care” and a kind of friendly solidarity against the system that made it difficult for the train to wait for five seconds.
    The South Ferry Terminal station looked new, smelled new, and actually was new. At least, there were perfectly functioning escalators, and large mosaics on the walls that weren’t smeared with graffiti. They showed Manhattan in various periods of its history, in white, silver, and gold. Above, at the exit, there were all kinds of street sellers ready to descend on the tourists.
    “Tickets for city tours! Come and go when you like!”
    “Hotdogs! Pretzels! Water!”
    “Souvenirs! Souvenirs! Souvenirs!”
    Their cacophony was only drowned out by an ambulance that turned onto Water Street at breakneck speed, sirens wailing.
    For Zoe Schuhmacher, New York was, above all, an acoustic experience. Even the subway that had brought her to the southern tip of Manhattan had rattled, squeaked, and groaned, sometimes in turn, but mostly simultaneously. The loudspeakers that announced the stops emitted an incomprehensible mix of a droning male voice and static crunches and whistles that hurt her ears. For Zoe, New York was extremely noisy. But for the