2016 – What a year, right!? Only one day left until we start into 2017, and I hope you’ll all have a wonderful and sparkling New Year’s Eve and ring in 2017 as is right and proper! But before that, let us just do a very quick review of what happened in the last almost 366 (yes, it’s a leap year) days.
Why would they…?
What’s stuck in your mind? Brexit and Trump I guess, maybe some famous people who died and the most recent tragedies like the Brazilian plane that crashed in Colombia or the terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market. But are you aware of things that happened earlier this year? In the world as well as in everyone’s life so many things occurred, so that it often seems that those things must’ve been ages ago, not just months!
As I said before, probably no one has forgotten neither that Donald Trump won the US election in November nor that the Brits decided to leave the EU in June – both were narrow victories and everyone went to bed the night before, confident that the people there would take the right decision. Everyone will probably remember waking up in the morning and being completely shocked about what had happened.
Tragedies, disasters, catastrophes
But this can’t be it, what else happened this year? 
Satirist Jan Böhmermann presented a scandalous poem about the Turkish President Erdoğan. In Germany, the right-wing party AfD has had more and more success, in Turkey an attempted coup d’état, carried out by a group of the Turkish military, failed. Fidel Castro, Leonard Cohen, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Bud Spencer, Prince, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Muhammad Ali, Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, Ilse Aichinger, Schimon Peres, Peter Lustig, Max Mannheimer, Götz George, Roger Cicero, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Guido Westerwelle, George Michael and Carrie Fisher died. Jo Cox, a British Labour Party member, was murdered and in the fight for Aleppo thousands of people suffered from war and isolation. In Syria, Brussels, Munich, Ansbach, Nice, Orlando, Rouen, Berlin and in a German train people thought their destiny was to hurt or kill people. Those are just a few examples of death and destruction; things that happen every day somewhere in the world, but often go unnoticed if they don’t really affect us or our loved ones.
But: always look on the bright side of life
Although 2016 was quite a poor year, still a few pleasant things happened. Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. The Summer Olympics took place in Rio and Germany won 17 Gold medals. In Sweden, two baby princes were born and of course, Leonardo DiCaprio finally won his first Oscar! The “Bayrisches Reinheitsgebot” celebrated its 500-year anniversary and the world went crazy about Pokémon Go. Well, you can decide for yourself whether the last thing is good or sad. And last but not least, the Giant Panda isn’t endangered anymore! Isn’t that great news!?
For 2017, let’s hope there’ll be a longer paragraph about positive things. Happy New Year!
Author and Pictures: Eva Sitzberger