About every month now....I go through and make comparisons of Germany and the US...mostly from a fault-mindset.
Urbanization has basically destroyed LA, SF, Portland and Seattle. None of them are livable at this point. Between the drug scene, the robberies, the tent crowd, the pronoun people, and the wokeness....it's hard to imagine someone having the willing nature or dedication to staying there.
Germany? It's probably around eight steps behind the US at present. Yeah, there is graffiti virtually everywhere in urban Germany. Drugs? The junkie-quarter around the Frankfurt train station has made the area one to avoid. About every month, some reminder will come up that corruption is an issue.
The crime angle? Numbers used always reflect life since 2000....they never use the numbers of the 1970s/1980s. In the past five years....more police have been added to city and state ranks. You can ask people about safety, and the advice usually given....there are zones in every major city where it'd be best to retreat to your home by 10 PM each night. Safety in small towns and villages? Probably at a all-time safety value.
The police? Generally, in Germany....there's still a high belief that they are professional and perform their job at the level required. In the US....it's fairly split in public opinion, and most will say that there's too many marginalized police in uniform who don't have the skills required.
Poverty? It's preached and hyped to the max in the US....with blame going in 99 different directions. In Germany? If you look for it....it's there, but it's typically not that obvious. The one thing that Germans will hype....too many senior citizens are getting to a retirement stage, with only a marginal income.
The junkie scene? In the late 1970s of Germany, your only drug situation was Cannabis/weed, some heroin, and a bit of LSD. Today? There's probably forty-odd drugs on the streets of Frankfurt and Hamburg. The whole quarter around Frankfurt's train station is littered with needles and junkies. As bad as SF and Portland have become on drugs....I'd say the top five cities of Germany are only a couple of years behind.
Radicals? You might be able to gauge the US with left and right radicals, then suggest that Germany is around a '5' on this one-to-ten scale, but quietly each year advancing to the US extreme.
So I generally suggest that at this moment, you feel safer in non-metro Germany, than in most US cities of the same character. It's a safety thing that evolves, and that's the worrisome part of this discussion. Things change.
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