'Safeness' Scale

 Around twenty years ago, some military associate engaged me on the topic of safeness in Germany.  He saw 'X', and based on my time/tours in Germany....I saw 'Y'.

In 1978, I could walk any street of Frankfurt and feel absolutely safe.  I could ride the rails, and venture to Hamburg or Munich....feeling the same.  The worst that you might encounter were rowdy German drunks on a Friday or Saturday night.

In the mid-80s, you'd start to notice little things....more drug activity...drunks more likely to assault people...street crime went up a notch.  

When I came back in the 1990s....drug activity had gone up a notch or two.  The area around the Frankfurt train station could be classified as a place that you arrive, walk through, and leave.  Assaults/fights were more common.  Street people or the homeless crowd were increasing.  

Ten years after the wall came down (2000)?  Most Germans in the urbanized areas would readily agree that some things had occurred that they'd never seen in the 1970s/1980s.   Just about every single drug you could imagine....could now be purchased in the bigger cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, etc).  Mafia clans were doubling up (it wasn't just the Italians or Russians anymore).  Burglar statistics went up.  Stolen cars were a thriving business (often leaving the country in a matter of hours).  

From 2010 to now?  You could probably write a 300-page book yearly over oddball crime stories, safeness or lack of safeness, and describing the drug activity going on.

Folks living in highly rural areas?  Mostly untouched.  You can still walk around most smaller towns in the Pfalz or Bavaria, and feel 99-percent safe.  

Trying to make the case over asylum seekers being part of the problem? I've met a fair number of Syrians and Iraqis over the past decade, and consider 99-percent of them to be honest humble people.  They came as family units, and the unity of the family kept them along a straight path.  Where you saw issues...it was a single person (usually male) by himself, and no family unit to keep focus.

The bulk of the single male issues?  Mostly from countries like Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.  Germany was like a candy factory, with a thousand different ways to get into trouble (drugs, petty theft, alcohol, etc).

Mafia growth?  The police will say around twenty different nationalities are into family mafia units.  It goes into various things that you wouldn't have seen thirty years ago.

Untaxed tobacco being brought into the country?  You can walk into probably half of the shisha bars in Germany as a policeman doing a raid, and find various tobacco packages in the storage room....untaxed and imported from Eastern Europe.

A couple of days ago in my urbanized area of Wiesbaden....some Bulgarian couple (50s) got into a conflict on the street...around 3:30 AM.  End result....the guy killed the wife, and seriously wounded the sister-in-law.   Thirty years ago, if you suggested some assault like this would occur in town, most would say that it just wouldn't happen.

But as you look at various factors....it's generally safer in Frankfurt than in Atlanta.  There are various places I probably would avoid in Frankfurt after dark.  The Taunusstrasse area near the station?  I wouldn't walk it day or night....mostly because of the needles and seriously drugged-up folks in abundance.  The area around north Frankfurt (mostly all apartment living)?  Completely safe, day or night.

Riding the rails today?  Still completely safe.  You might complain about the AC units failing in the summer period, that toilets marginally work on most trains, or that too many nutcases stand around the train stations.  

My village, a mile or two outside of Wiesbaden?  Ten years ago, your biggest issue was drunk German teenagers at the local spring fest, and an average of one car stolen.  This past year?  Some gal walked out of the house at 5 AM to catch the early bus and some 'punk' attempted to take her purse.  She actually fought the kid off and eventually he gave up (running away).  There's probably an average of a dozen homes broke in per year now in the village.  Security cameras are a big deal now.

The theft of cars flipping to the taking of just parts?  That's another odd part of the current scene.  Around the city weekly now, there's probably half-a-dozen cars broken into....mostly to take the airbags or media devices.  Last month, they noted the newest trend....cutting off the catalytic converters (for quick cash).

Alcoholism among Germans?  It's massively up compared against what you would have seen in the 1980s.  They run specialized rehab clinics now for teens of the ages of 14 to 16.  

I would have laughed in the 1990s if you'd suggested that my regional town (Wiesbaden) had a rough neighborhood or a 'zone' to avoid.  Today, I'd draw three circles on the city map and generally tell you to avoid these areas after dark.  The town became one of the first in Germany to identify a weapons-free zone....which really meant that after 7 PM....cops were free to stop you....ask for an ID, and frisk you.  There's probably not a single week where they don't bust some idiot for a knife or weapon (even pepper-spray could fall into this category).  

So I still give it a safe rating, but it's mostly because just about everywhere else in the world went down a step or two as well.  Things are relative.