Gang rapes in parks, violence in outdoor swimming pools – reports from the German capital Berlin are shocking almost daily. Everything is not so bad, according to the official visitor website Visit Berlin. The city is “basically safe” – women and Jews are excluded.
Even the leader of the Green Party, Ricarda Lang, had to admit that she would not stroll alone through Görlitzer Park in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Due to a gang rape, the green space was recently in the focus of news coverage again.
Is visiting Berlin dangerous?, many tourists ask themselves. The city’s official visitor website emphasises that the city is “basically safe”, but crime cannot be ruled out and some safety aspects should be taken into account. This includes “avoiding dark parks and corners at night”.
Women report that harassment, insults, sexual assaults and attacks are by no means confined to the crowded inner city. “You actually only walk fast to your destination with blinders on,” two young women are quoted as saying in a report by the station RBB. “It’s not a problem of parks, it’s a problem everywhere: at every stop I get off at, in every street I walk through.”
Indeed, n-tv also reports: police are currently counting more assaults against women in public. From 2019 to 2022, the numbers of female victims of assaults, threats, sexual offences and robberies at night on streets and in parks rose from around 3000 to 4210.
But it is not only women that Berlin is not safe everywhere. Travel websites have long advised gay and lesbian couples or Jews to rather not walk through certain parts of the city at night clearly recognisable by behaviour or signs such as the Star of David, because there are always insults or attacks.
Offizielles Besucherportal: Berlin ist sicher – außer für Frauen und Juden | Exxpress