Parcly Taxel: So that was Switzerland – a far cry from what the stereotypes have. It is a country whose houses sport solar panels, whose museums look more to the future than to the past. Its residents do not shirk from the sight of other Europeans, or indeed tourists from farther like us; they see themselves as having a duty to ameliorate the world.

Spindle: Basel, right next to a country tripoint as it is, perhaps serves as an egregious example of such internationalisation. There are two railway stations with long-distance service; we came in on the one co-operated by SNCF, Basel SBB, but after eating our buffet breakfast at the Hyperion it was only a straight walk to Basel Badische Bf, served by Deutsche Bahn and the starting point for our next inter-city trip – ICE 370 continuing to Berlin Ostbahnhof.

Parcly: There was somewhat of a mix-up as we boarded on platform 4, only to find the train not moving after the scheduled departure time. Finally another traveller told us that it had been moved to platform 5, we switched and we departed.

2 hours and 40 minutes later we stopped again at Germany's busiest train station, this time getting out amongst a wave of luggage-wielding creatures. Frankfurt (Main) Hbf has platforms as far as the eye can see, with hoofsteps to match, but the hotel we checked into – Citadines Apart'Hotel – was visually a good deal more digestible.

Spindle: Once again, check-in time was 3pm and we had arrived early, so we left our luggage there and wandered around the nearby Skyline Plaza to fill time, having lunch from the "Asian food" stall of its in-house food court. It was a plate of chicken noodles paired with stir-fried vegetables; Parcly, with more than adequate knowledge of her descent from Mistmane's tribe (whose location overlaps with the present-day Kirin Village), found fault with the excessive proportion of unsauced noodles, occupying half the plate.

Parcly: Then again, dropping the noodle proportion to two-fifths would have been enough. Anyway, to digest that carbohydrate-laden meal in my belly I hopped on a tram (using the €9 ticket from before – the month wasn't over yet) to the Römer, Frankfurt's city hall for over 600 years. Its immaculately preserved façade faces a fountain, a charming cobblestone square and the Alte Nikolaikirche among others, with the historic Paulskirche nearby.

I admit that the latter looks like a square-eared pony's head if seen from above.

Princess Cadance: The Eiserner Steg bridge across the Main lies a stone's throw away from the aformentioned buildings and squares, which together form the Altstadt. Main is necessary to distinguish this swarming hive of dream from the mid-sized Frankfurt an der Oder, right on the border with Poland, but context can decide the meaning of unqualified "Frankfurt" most of the time.

Returning to Eiserner Steg, Parcly and Spindle came across the "love lock" phenomenon also seen on other bridges around the world. Couples write or etch their names on a padlock that is then hung anywhere convenient on a bridge (the holes in other locks are fair game), and the key is tossed into the river and never seen again. Easy to do, but... [sheets of shiny green magic envelop Cadance]

Queen Chrysalis: ...like my swarms of unreformed changelings banging on Shining Armour's force field around Canterlot during his wedding to the actual Cadance, the combined weight of all these forever-linked locks poses a structural threat to the bridge. Besides, the cross-species friends never had any padlock in the first place, so they did the right thing and took in Frankfurt's skyline beyond the bridge's immediate environment.

Parcly: More of these distant buildings were revealed to us on a Primus-Linie boat tour down and up the Main. Among them are

• the European Central Bank headquarters
• a coal-fired power station without any visible smoke trails (still, ewww!)
• the Commerzbank Tower, Germany's tallest skyscraper
• Dreikönigskirche (Church of the Three Magi), whose prominent steeple was under renovation scaffolding when we passed it

Chrysalis: As the first and third items in the list above suggest, Frankfurt has metamorphosed into Germany's commercial and financial centre and is thus riddled with shops of all sizes, styles, purposes and provenances. The promenades and narrow alleys hosting these shops were a familiar respite for the Canterlot native Parcly, having had several trips to the consumerist side of Japan, but Spindle was less than impressed for the same reason.

Spindle: To be more precise, this part of Frankfurt represented a jarring break from the scenes we had encountered in the earlier segments of our tour through the German Sprachraum. Switzerland as a whole has a deep integration with (and care for) nature, while Munich lifestyle is still quite easy-going and diffuses into the surrounding plains. Here we found nothing but steel, glass and tilework, cleaving serenity like the bow of an icebreaker.

Nevertheless the architecture does compensate a bit for the lack of spirit. For example, the MyZeil shopping centre has a "wormhole" in its glass façade, providing ventilation as much as it provides eye candy.

Parcly: With few relative novelties left in the city I returned to Skyline Plaza and chomped down on a genuine Vedang hayburger. (Yes, 100% vegan burgers in real life, with plant-based meat.) Then I returned to the hotel to finalise my plans for tomorrow's day trip to Cologne.