Former Air Force People and Lindsey Air Station/Wiesbaden

From 1945 until 1993....the Air Force operated the medical center in town and the Lindsey Air Station.  To be honest, by the mid-1980s.....most of the Air Force folks began to disappear and by 1993...it was mostly all Army folks in the local area. 

If you asked what's changed or different?

The Big Apple (the one and only real disco in Wiesbaden) is long gone.  I doubt if there's a single disco club in the town left. 

There's three Kentucky Fried Chicken places left around town (the newest at the train-station).

The old bus central station that existed near Schwalbacher Strasse?  Gone....total redesign of bus flow in Wiesbaden.

The train station?  Mostly still the same.  There is a Dunkin Donuts in the interior now, and a small McDonalds operation.

The area of Lindsey Air Station?  Mostly redesigned as a middle-class neighborhood and twenty-odd apartment buildings added. 

The demographics of Wiesbaden?  Turks make up 13,000 of the local population now.  Poles? 7,000.  Italians? 4,000.  'Multi-culti' would be an appropriate phrase to use now around town.  The west-end, unfortunately now is the low-income area of town....while Sonnenberg is considered the high-end.

Pizzerias?  Some would argue that Bierstadt has become pizzeria-capital, with twenty-odd pizzeria operations going on presently.

The American Arms?  Set to be torn down and student-housing to be built. 

The BX?  The old BX sits there....now unused.  A newer operation was built on the back side of the Army housing area....probably double the size of the old site.  The old commissary is still operating.

Crime?  Over the last decade, most locals would say that crime has gone up....mostly house-break-ins.  More alcohol incidents are noted locally now. 

The old city post office next to the train station is long gone now.  Now a mini-mall area exists....with marginal customer traffic. 

The Schiersteiner Bridge?  About four years ago, they finally decided that it needed to be replaced and started on the replacement bridge next to it.  Somewhere in the construction phase....some guy bumped the support column and triggered a BIG event where no one could use the old bridge for several months and triggered one of the biggest traffic tie-ups of the past fifty years.  The new Schiersteiner Bridge?  Still a year away.  The old bridge is running but with limited traffic.

The Frankfurt Airport is now considered a big deal with the region.  A train leaves every twenty-odd minutes from Wiesbaden to the Airport, and onto Frankfurt..

The population is noted now at 280,000 and likely will go to 300,000 within twenty years. 

Mainz is about to turn the old harbor area into massive new upscale housing, and invent a suburb out of thin air.

A wine-fest is run in Wiesbaden every August now, around the Markt-Platz area. 

Bike trails have been built all over the place in the past decade. 

Finally....it still has that small metropolitan look and image.  You could have walked away thirty years ago and find it mostly looking the same.