Luxembourg’s Growing Crime Problem

It is strange to have someone try to fight you in what was once the safest city in the world. It is stranger still for it to happen in a bright late-afternoon surrounded by hundreds of commuters.

Yet, that was my experience in Luxembourg.

There I was, the hapless tourist, looking around with a slightly gormless and bushy-eyed expression, when in the train station I was approached (and not by a friendly local wanting to give me advice, or even a policeman concerned at the excessive photos I was taking of any and every mild curiosity). No, I had accidentally snapped a drug deal in progress.

“Bonjour”, he said. “Bonjour”, I replied.

Then, silence.

After a few seconds, he started to try and look at my phone. This was rather difficult given the fact that I was standing against a wall. So, I was presented with the intimidating spectacle of a man attempting to maintain a malignant glare while contorting himself into a position akin to something from a Shakira song.

Here came the incomprehensible, yet still obvious, threats. I played my part by replying in a manner which confirmed many a stereotype of the British tourist, namely that “I [was] very very sorry, I do not speak French, only English.”

Puzzled by the fact that it is hard to subtly threaten someone in a crowded station when unable to talk to them, he asked me in broken English whether or not I spoke Dutch. Although I said that I do not, he proceeded to use it anyway. In an unsettling Anglo-Dutch amalgam, I was able to discern the following: I was a “problem” and there was going to be a “hit”.

This was shortly followed by his use of the robotic voice of Google Translate to inform me that I should leave the station immediately.

Despite being Dutch-speakers, these men were clearly not of long-standing Dutch ancestry, but instead originated from somewhere far south of the Mediterranean. They were certainly not local to Luxembourg. This motley crew followed me for twenty minutes, towards the city’s centre, until finally I was able to extricate myself.

Unfortunately, my experience is not uncommon. Their crime statistics are more foreboding than Shelley or Stevenson. The situation is quickly deteriorating, with a 42% increase in crime over the last couple of years alone.

Even in my short time there, I noticed bridges become evermore graffitied and windows become evermore smashed. There was this lucid feeling that, while parts of the city were scenic and quiet, these were areas where people were not at home and felt no affinity for those who notionally were.

Locals are concerned. There have been mass protests, a loss of nearly 4% of the city’s population, and even an Instagram page dedicated to campaigning against the palpable decline.

Mothers report how they have been attacked or masturbated at while holding babies as young as three-months old. Others report public defecation and, as I repeatedly experienced, being stalked home until venturing far enough from the Gare district that they turn back.

The police response has been predictably weak. They have resorted to such methods as playing classical music to deter loitering and hoping that the intermittent use of private security will fix the problem. Security guards stand idly on platforms and in lobbies, while just metres away people are brazenly deviant. While some officials have tried to give the police more powers and launched raids on the areas, others have tried to legalize begging and anti-social behaviour more generally.

Yet, like so many European technocrats, they deny there is a problem. They show more solidarity with the growing criminal underclass than with frightened children. They see no problem with the fact that the social fabric of the nation has eroded, such that offices have had to start hiring security guards in the first place. They consider the capabilities of human life to be worth so little that having someone stand at attention to deter the criminality of others is seen as “employment” and not a tragedy of a life wasted. They do not even reflect on their own culpability in this.

Unfortunately, Luxembourg has some of the highest levels in Europe of drugs found in wastewater. It was no surprise to me, therefore, that the train station from which the EU’s technocrats arrive and then get the tram right into the heart of the EU’s institutions is a hotbed of open drug use.

The train network into Luxembourg becomes both a metaphorical and literal needle for a poison which is destroying the city. Wherever liberal elites go, the worst of humanity follows, whether as a result of their direct culpability in financing the drug trade or fast on the heels of the soft-touch approach to borders and policing which they institute.

For the technocrat, the fact your vacuum cleaner may be too powerful and save you too much time is a great moral hazard, but turning a blind eye as their friends and colleagues purchase drugs from murderers, pimps, and international terrorists need not trouble our otherwise zealous regulators.

For now, Luxembourg’s wealth is able to somewhat hide the problem. Such an approach, however, is no better than wiping the surface of mould as it grows on your walls, until it spreads and becomes so endemic that it can be hidden no more.

Although this disorder is currently contained within one district, I fear it will continue to deteriorate. If it spreads, then the character of the city will change fundamentally. For the city’s geography lends itself well to violent crime. To navigate around the centre, one must traverse narrow and unlit historical battlements, parks, and alleys; in some instances, it even requires venturing into long corridors to access lifts. It is currently very quaint and charming, but one cannot escape the sense that it could so easily become nightmarish if the population ceases to be one which is high-trust and has an outstanding regard for civility.

Although this disorder is currently contained within one district, I fear it will continue to deteriorate. If it spreads, then the character of the city will change fundamentally. For the city’s geography lends itself well to violent crime. To navigate around the centre, one must traverse narrow and unlit historical battlements, parks, and alleys; in some instances, it even requires venturing into long corridors to access lifts. It is currently very quaint and charming, but one cannot escape the sense that it could so easily become nightmarish if the population ceases to be one which is high-trust and has an outstanding regard for civility.

Essentially, all of the paths which in Britain, if frequented at night, would be done with great trepidation and avoided at all costs are your only option in Luxembourg. Yet, during my stay, I did not feel that pang of fear outside of the Gare area. It is one of the most paradoxical juxtapositions I have encountered. Wherein I felt incredibly secure in a geography I knew I was vulnerable in—isolated, alone, and cloaked by shadow—but amongst the most alert I’ve ever been in the open and bright Gare district.

One consolation is that, if at night I crossed a group of men while walking on the narrow wooded paths down the hillside, I knew I would be met by locals with a smile. In general, Luxembourg still retains the values which, if not killed off for good, allows all to prosper. This is even more so in the surrounding villages, where I discovered to my great delight that the churches never close and allow people to sit in solemn reflection past midnight but before the sunrise.

Ultimately, then, my concerns about Luxembourg’s vulnerability to disorder come with a caveat. I suspect that its population will continue to consist mostly of locals and European central bankers, and with it community tensions will thus remain confined to vagabond outsiders occupying the areas in and around the station. During my stay, my hostel room was of course filled with fellow tourists, but there were also a fair few non-European migrants looking to find work and a country to take up residency. None of them stayed in the city for more than a couple of days, as apparently the verdant landscapes of the Ardennes, in all its lush woodland glory, are “boring”. What a saving grace it may turn out to be for the locals of Luxembourg that their sublime surroundings, by some profane quirk, are not universally admired.