The One in Four Story

A study came in the news today (via Focus news magazine)....which talks about German perceptions (not statistics but pure personal feeling), and this odd thing came up on Frankfurt (one of my more favorites German cities).  It's a short two-line item buried in the story.

Since 2015, the polling reveals that from Frankfurt residents....one in four residents now try to avoid the region around the train station (the Bahnhof).  Chief reason?  Perceived crime (meaning just 'shady characters', drug usage, perceived lack of cops, etc).  It doesn't matter if crime is rare around the Bahnhof....it's that people see something and it bothers them.

I can remember the Bahnhof from 1978, later in the mid-80s, still later here in the past twenty years.  Every ten years, I'd say that the half-mile area around the Bahnhof has stepped down one degree, and you just shake your head.  There's potentially a thousand drug addicts (heroin, etc) who live in the shadow of the Bahnhof now.  You can walk via the tunnels from the sidewalk to the deepest point of the subway, and find a twenty to forty addicts at 7AM laying there from their morning 'juice'.  If you make it to the sidewalk area....there's probably another two-hundred in some attempt to buy their stuff or find the right price.

Would I avoid the station?  No.  As long as you don't linger or stand there to admire some junkie laying there or some delusional guy yelling at the ceiling....it's probably OK.  The area outside of the station?  Taunusstrasse for example?  Day or night, I'd advise you to go and find another way to get around that part of town. 

But this really brings you to the topic of statistics not mattering and people simply having a perception of things gone wrong.  Just having 'shady' characters is enough drive a German to a rooted feeling of a bad part of town.  The fact that the other 99-percent of Frankfurt is fairly safe and uncomplicated?  It doesn't matter to them.  So with 700,000 local residents, if you used the one in four situation....that kinda leads onto 150,000 plus people in the city who'd prefer to avoid the train station.  That in itself....is a significant factor.