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Princess Celestia: Parcly woke up in the Swiss Chocolate Hotel to broad daylight at 6am. The blanket she slept under was very soft and fluffy; combined with her decision not to sleep in her genie bottle, but rather sideways on the bed with her head sticking out, it led to her involuntarily twisting her head so much it popped off and dropped to the floor. Her headless body was left encased in a cocoon of comfort.

Queen Chrysalis: Which is doubly fitting as Popp scored both goals in Germany’s 2-1 victory over France at the Euros, a match the bottled alicorn watched live on ZDF before sleeping.

Even this “corner hotel”, located in the wedge of a narrow Y-junction, had its own buffet breakfast with the usual offerings.

Celestia: What are you doing here?

Chrysalis: Oh, it just so happens that our coat colours, white and black, are those of Germany’s kit.

Parcly Taxel: After having a plentiful breakfast à la Twilight and pancakes, I simply lazed in my hotel room until the check-out time of 11am, with Spindle’s body for cooling. Then I left my luggage with the staff and began a random tour of the city, going down some of the streets I visited the first time and some new ones.

Bahnhofstrasse and most streets intersecting it are saturated with luxury or otherwise high-end brands – you could as easily find the same on Saddle Row. Further away lie restaurants, cafés and seedier establishments: I passed by Le Dézaley, where I had gorged on cheese fondue, and the open space in front of the Grossmünster. Church bells rang again at this point, signifying noon.

Spindle: A few minutes later we saw a poster at the Fraumünster advertising free-admission organ music at 12:30pm on Thursdays – déjà vu yet again, but today was Thursday! Too good to pass up, we got ourselves comfortable in the pews, sat through the presentation of the organist Anastasia Stahl, and listened.

Octavia: How often nowadays can you hear the sweet, hallowed voice of an organ? They evolved with Europe’s churches, augmenting choirs like an angel spreading its wings in mercy, at the same time embedding themselves into the surrounding architecture as the real presence of said angel.

But many decades of secularisation have depressed church attendance and the outward expression of faith, and religious finances along with them. It is now harder to fund organ maintenance and organist training as musical tastes flock towards Vinyl’s style of sweeping beats and gnashing riffs. Hence the church associations have had to take on the role of preservationists, preventing the organ’s voice from becoming a lost art, instead disseminating it to the public as intangible cultural heritage such as this Fraumünster session.

For this alone, I am grateful.

Spindle: We were serenaded indeed, for about half an hour, but we needed to have lunch before taking off for home for real. For that we scooted to Rheinfelder Bierhalle, yet another café-restaurant on the first floor of a multi-storey building at a junction of alleys (which made me suspect that these were in fact shophouses), where Parcly had veal and rösti and garden vegetables as the main course and “coupe Dänemark”, a lovingly whipped ice cream glass, for dessert.

Parcly: At last, after being manipulated to spend an extra day on our trip, I hopped on IR 75 to Zürich Flughafen, a one-stop affair lasting but around ten minutes. In the middle of a continent often called the Cradle of Civilisation, I looked up and saw dark clouds in one direction… there were innumerably many things to see and partake in under the brighter skies beyond, outside the ring of German-speaking cities Spindle and I had traversed. Now, though, Canterlot was calling.