I passed through Bern again a couple of days ago. As I’ve mentioned here before, it’s one of my favorite cities in Switzerland, and it’s super easy to get to from Basel.

I was actually going to Vaud that day, but since the weather was so lovely and the day was perfect, I decided to stop for a while.

I continued my usual walk from the city center to the bear pit, but I paused at the Aare bridge. The landscape was so beautiful that I had to stop and take pictures of the river.

The view was incredible: the turquoise water flowing beneath the bridge, set against the bright green of the trees, grass, and forested slopes on the left riverbank, as you can see above.

Back in 2018 I wrote a short post about what I had always considered one of the structural quirks of Colombian democracy: presidential elections, held every four years, always collide with the Football World Cup. When Colombia qualifies, football takes center stage in the national conversation and the election campaigns have to fight for attention.

Today is May 31st — first round of the 2026 presidential election — and the timing is even tighter than it was eight years ago. The World Cup kicks off on June 11th, just eleven days from now. Unless there is a first-round victory, which looks unlikely since the leading candidate Iván Cepeda was polling behind the threshold back in April, the runoff will take place on June 21st — right in the middle of the group stage. Colombia's third group match, against Uzbekistan, is on June 17th. Colombians vote again four days after that.

We need to focus on this election — it's so important! But honestly, I have a feeling the country is going to get distracted again, pulling attention to 'mi selección'. Seriously, some things just never change. 🤦‍♂️

Eurostat just published their Demography of Europe – 2026 edition, an interactive report covering population trends across all 27 EU member states over several decades. It is worth checking if you are interested in demographic data.

The headline is that the EU's 451 million people are growing slowly but ageing very fast. The share of people aged 65 and over has climbed from 17% to 22% in just two decades; the median age now sits at 44.9 years; and deaths have outnumbered births every year since 2012. With a fertility rate of just 1.34, well below the 2.1 needed to sustain a population.

What's keeping the numbers steady is immigration: nearly 6 million people arrived in 2024 alone. A quarter of children are now born to foreign-born mothers. The numbers make it pretty clear that Europe's demographic makeup is going to look quite different in a generation from now.

Yesterday, while riding the train through the city of Neuchâtel, I looked out of the window, and the scenery was absolutely spectacular during that golden hour when the light was just perfect for taking a photo. So, I quickly grabbed my phone and took the shot you can see above.

As you can see, the image captures the city of Neuchâtel as the train passed, with the historic Neuchâtel Castle and the Collegiate Church dominating the hill on the right. Below them, a sea of medieval rooftops descends toward Lake Neuchâtel. I was quite lucky with the timing.

I took a stroll down by the lake this evening in Morges. The air had a nice chill to it, but the view was absolutely worth it. The sky is rarely so clear that you can see all the way across to the Alps, but tonight was one of those nights, as you can see in the picture above.

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