Last weekend I got up early and rode my bike for a ride—something I do fairly often when the weather starts warming up. I crossed Basel in the morning when absolutely no one was around, and you hear all the birds singing along, arrived at Burgfelderhof, and headed over to buy bread in the french town of St. Louis. After crossing through the city, I went to Huningue, and then passed over the famouse "Pasarelle des trois pays" bridge you can see in the photo above, to get into Weil am Rhein and pick up some extra groceries before heading back to Switzerland.

This structure, called Dreiländerbrücke in German, is a beatiful bridge that cross the Rhine between Huningue (France) and Weil-am-Rhein (Germany), and according to wikipedia, it holds the world record for the longest pedestrian and bicycle-only walkway

I once read that Spalentor is one of Basel’s most interesting iconic buildings—it's almost a whole history lesson in a single building! It truly does stand out against the city's old town with its unique architecture. The tower's history is very interesting because it is linked to one of the main events that shaped the city: the earthquake of 1356

That dramatic seismic event reduced the city to ruins, and when it had to be rebuilt, the city was enclosed by a bigger ring of walls. This included multiple defensive structures, such as seven gate towers, and one of them was indeed Spalentor. Today, the tower stands as a symbol of the city's history, surrounded by other historic landmarks like St. Johann’s Tower and St. Alban's Tower.

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.

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