Finally 2016 is ending. As John Oliver mentioned in the last episode of his show Last Week Tonight, 2016 has been a pretty shitty year. So many music and movie legends passed away (David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and George Michael), and Europe experienced terror in many cities, including Nice, Istanbul, Brussels, and Berlin.

On the other hand, populist and far-right anti-immigrant movements gained a lot of traction in Europe and America. The popular vote brought many unexpected outcomes, including the Brexit victory despite Scottish and Northern Irish opposition, the Colombian plebiscite's rejection of the peace agreement reached in Cuba, and finally the astonishing Trump victory in the electoral college, even though he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots.

The only silver lining of this year was the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. Let's hope this doesn't change in 2017 (cough, Trump), since that would make it a horrible year as well.

Looking at the final 2016 US presidential election results, it's remarkable how badly Trump lost in California: 8.7 million vs 4.4 million votes. It's not surprising that in the days after the election the #calexit hashtag started to trend. Clinton won the popular vote, so many Americans will feel underrepresented by the electoral college system they have in place, but nowhere is this more dramatic than in California.

Interesting dataset from Eurostat regarding personal transfer inflows and outflows across the European Union. On one hand, France has the biggest negative balance, and on the other, Poland has the biggest positive one.

This morning I was talking to my father-in-law, and he mentioned he wanted to check out the synagogue in Basel. I had no idea there was such a building in the city, but I checked online and discovered that there is indeed a neo-Byzantine domed structure, originally constructed in 1868 and enlarged in 1892. Above is a picture of this synagogue.

This weekend I did a small city break to the Bulgarian capital. On my last day before coming back to Berlin, I experienced my first snowfall of 2016, and it was quite a big one, as you can see in this picture of the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral.

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