The Neo-Nazi situation in Greifswald

I'm trying to help a Spanish woman who is a friend of mine. She has the opportunity to live in Greifswald for a while but is concerned about the neo-nazi situation as she has darker skin and stands out. I've seen other similar threads here about other towns, but none about Greifswald.
Does anyone live there or have good knowledge of the situation in Greifswald?

Many thanks in advance

Jim

I really don't think she should be worried. Greifswald is on the Baltic coast and while it is a little out of the way for foreigners it is in a hot-spot area for tourism within Germany. The situation wrt undesirable elements in Germany is overblown by the press.

http://www.greifswald.de/im-ueberblick/englisch.html

Thanks for the info. I had hoped maybe someone on Toytown lived there. Maybe it's not a hit with the english speakers!
I wouldn't go round telling foreign visitors that the press exaggerate the dangers though. There are a lot of problem areas.

Of course this statement is almost invariably made by white Northern Europeans. Statistically, this place has about 3% foreigners. They don't break down by world regions or race but even if you are generous and say 1/3 are brown or black then you are at 1%. Unemployment is 15.7%.

Oh God, you're so right. Let's all stay in our own villages and live out our days in blissful happiness.

Wow, what a factual statement that was. So have you ever been accosted in East Germany? I escaped a potentially ugly incident at a petrol station in Rostock myself. But I guess you haven't because you probably look exactly like them. The fact of the matter is there is a higher potential in the east then in the west of this happening. Don't gloss it over and blame the press because it probably won't happen to you. People should go in with their eyes open is all I'm saying.

Edit: I am interested in how the press overblows the situation as well. How about providing some examples?

I would think that the fact that Greifswald has a university makes the city more open to foreigners. Sure, one cannot exclude with absolute certainty any encounters with scary people, but that applies to any threats. Here's some info in Spanish about Greifswald from Deutsche Welle radio.

Another question is whether your friend will like the lifestyle which is quite different from Spain. In most smaller towns in East Germany, the streets are deserted in the evenings. The question "Dónde está la movida?" (movida = nightlife), asked by a Spaniard when visiting the quarter with the pubs of a German university city became proverbial for me and my friends because it expressed his disappointment so well.

And half of those are university students.

However, Uni Greifswald only has a foreigner quota settled at half as high as at other German universities. Not exactly an attractive global meetingplace.

I think we would all do well no to spread prejudice about a place we obviously know nothing about. To claim you can't be save in eastern Germany as a foreigner is stupid at best ( I think it is rather malicious). You can get into a racist attack in the Rems-Murr-Kreis near Stuttgart where there are 40 percent immigrants and unemployment stood at less than 4 percent. Statistics ain't telling you anything about the place.

A link -> http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=1082

As a tall, white, blonde skinhead do you recommend that I forget my application to Georgia State in Atlanta? Problem is it offers the course I want.
But I guess the US is safer than Germany? I'd be ok on Chicago's Southside, right? Or in parts of NYC or LA? How about Houston?

All I'm trying to say is that you're buying into the '(Eastern) Germans are fascists' stereotype hook, line and sinker.
Looking at crime extremes, the murder rate in Germany is less than half that of the UK and approx one sixth of that of the US.

funny how no one from the area posted...

I live to far away to really give an accurate picture. I won't say it is easy... I do have to watch my language sometimes, but I do fit in and look 'like one of them'. So I get mistaken for German or Dutch when I speak bad German. There are more neo's here than I thought. It is just smart to open your eyes and be cautious like you would in any city...It's not perfect here, and my husband takes precaution with me around. Sucks, but that is how life is. I dealt with it in the US, as a white woman, to always be aware of my surroundings and I do it here to.

Just one thing to add:

In that analysis, they're obfuscating the fact that there are considerably more people living in the West than the East, and that they picked a party to analyse that already existed in West Germany for 20 years (rather successfully) before reunification.

For example, one of their quoted numbers is "over 70% of NPD staff are from the West". Well, duh, it's a West German party originally. Now to add to that, "the West" however holds 80% of the German population. That means that statistically any random East German is 71% more likely than any random West German to become a NPD staff member.

Oh my.

well said Kato