An Observation

Yesterday evening....I accompanied the wife (German) downtown Wiesbaden and we ended up at a local sidewalk pub.

On the table next to us sat an American retired guy, and his German wife (from this area originally), and two of her Wiesbaden friends.  Apparently, the couple was visiting the local area. 

So there was a lot of catching-up going on and a long-winded discussion by the three German ladies.  I typically don't listen in, but this became somewhat interesting.

My impression is that the German wife had been out of the local area for at least six years, and this led to a number of standard topics (renovations, closures, new stores, changes, etc).

But about fifteen minutes into this....came the topic of migration, immigration and refugees.  These were four people....all over the age of 60.

There wasn't much of a positive spin by any of the three German older ladies on this topic of immigration or refugees.  It's safe to say that they had a fairly negative view.

This is generally what I've noticed over the past five years.....that older Germans (say over the age of fifty, and not university graduates) are extremely prone to be anti-immigration and question both the news media and politicians on the trends.  They don't buy into the multi-culty business, benefit to society business, or the positive outcomes.

For someone who might have grown up in this area and been gone for fifteen to twenty years....it's probably a different atmosphere with significant changes.  But it's also grown an urban population in the past decade that is non-German within the city boundary of Wiesbaden.  I won't necessarily say it's negative.  But you can't help but notice a growing beggar population, police signs for the anti-knife zone, and read through notices in the local news weekly of assaults within a half-mile zone of the train-station.

On the positive side, it's still dramatically safer than Memphis or New Orleans (at least in my humble opinion) and I'm 100-percent safe in my neighborhood.....willing to step outside at midnight and admire a full-moon, without a bit of worry.

But it's interesting how German now see their old 'town'.