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by cybertim 3038 days ago
I've lived there for five years, and like you, I'm always very surprised by all the articles and comments made by people about the Bijlmer (about it being the worst place ever..) But all these people tend to have one thing in common, they have never lived or even visited the Bijlmer, or indeed tend to be a bit racist. It's sad, because it is not a failure at all. In retrospect I even believe it's one of the most unique places The Netherlands has to offer.
1 comments
jacquesm 3038 days ago
Hilarious. I've known the Bijlmer intimately since roughly 1980, my mom lived there for quite a while, and extended family has lived there since the early 1970's and continue to live there today. I've seen parts of it being built (the later sections), school mates in 1977 lived there and I used to bike there regularly.

Gliphoeve, Kelbergen and other areas of the Bijlmer were so bad at some point that the police did not want to go there unless they went as a team. Robberies were on the order of the day, drug use in the subway stations and on the trains was so common nobody even noticed any more. The parking garages were essentially chopshops by night.

At a guess you have only seen the Bijlmer since long after the attempts to clean it all up have started. Maybe you'd believe my mom who had to get a large dog just to be able to make it from the shopping center to her house without being molested or robbed?

If you feel the Bijlmer is one of the most unique places NL has to offer then you are definitely part of some exquisite group of people with acquired tastes, the vast majority of the people that I know that have lived there and have moved out were happy to finally leave it all behind them.

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pasabagi 3036 days ago
How common? I just ask because I moved from a country where many people I know, including myself, have been violently robbed or attacked at one point in their lives (england), to Germany - where I've never even heard of somebody getting mugged.

The Germans are pretty unaware of how safe it is here, on the whole - they'll often explain to me a particular street is dangerous, or an area is bad - but honestly, if you're from any other country, it's a bit ridiculous.

I mean, feeling unsafe is bad - but to put it in perspective, one of my german friends lived in Coventry for a short while. On his second day there, he was beaten up at a bus stop for having long hair. That's what an unsafe area is like in england, which I'm sure is far more mild than most places in the world.

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