Part of my series over Wiesbaden, and designed for folks who might have been stationed here in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s.
The five key changes that you'd probably notice today.
1. Traffic in the city is 'hell'. If you gauge rush-hour in the mornings and afternoons, figure around 293,000 residents....it's an absolute mess.
Everyone agrees on this, and various things have been discussed (the tram idea lasted 3 years before the vote disqualified it). There's even a discussion about making the whole downtown car-free.
2. The city has become multi-culty. In the 1960s, the foreign non-German image was mostly Turks, Greeks, Italians and Americans in Wiesbaden.
Today? I'd go and suggest at least fifty different ethnic groups. You could easily be introduced to Chileans, or Venezuelans at some restaurant, and South Koreans or Malaysians at a cafe.
3. Crime is something that you don't think much about in the daylight hours, but it's a part of your evening experience. I'd say from 10 PM to sun-up....at least four areas of the city are no-go or avoid areas now.
It reached a point around two years ago where the city council made the shopping district into a 'no-weapons-zone' from 9 PM on (just making this rule, didn't cure the knife problem). If you go into the area....cops are free to stop you now, force an ID check, and a frisk. Weapons on you? Automatic charges and nothing cheap on the fine business.
For a one-year period, we had this silly fake-cop situation....where they'd stop tourists and demand to review their purse or wallet....removing cash.
4. Alcoholics and drug addicts. Between the train station area and downtown, there's probably in the range of sixty 'habit-people' that you might notice.
The drug scene is mostly to the rear of the train station (left side as you face it)....back toward the club scene.
The drinker crowd make the rounds of garbage cans, looking for deposit bottles/cans, to return and make enough to pay for their next beer.
5. Beggars? From the early AM hours to almost sundown....if you walk the downtown area....if you were comparing things today with 1980....you'd be a bit shocked over the number of beggars.
I'd say in a one-hour period of walk, you'd probably encounter at least five.
The positive side?
1. Wiesbaden is expected to continue to grow (presently 293k residents). If you measured the quality of life, most residents would give high marks. Even if you included crime, most would tell that it's much better than Frankfurt.
2. If you used TripAdvisor for restaurants in the area, it'd lay out literally hundreds of options. If you drew the 10 km circle, you could probably eat out every night of the week for two years, without going back to any repeats.
3. The Kurpark and casino are still the central draw for tourism for the city.
4. If you drew both Wiesbaden and Mainz together, with a 10 km 'zone'....the population base is 750k easily. You just don't get that massive 'urbanized' feeling over the combined region.
5. The railway station might have changed a dozen interior operations over the years (both a McDonalds and KFC today sit there), but it's still the best way to stumble through and board a train to any destination in Germany or Europe.
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