European Train Stations you have felt most uneasy visiting

[Wolfie]

One tends to forget how awful the old Pentonville Road station area was on Thameslink around 20 years ago - dealer central (and the area was then not great) , station itself fine , but the external public realm was desperate to say the very least. Concentrated and focused police action apparently sorted it out. The old St Pancras main line station was itself "not great" , not like it is today !

It was set a little earlier but the film Mona Lisa summed up the Kings Cross area in the 90s/early 00s very well.

 

[Tester]

One tends to forget how awful the old Pentonville Road station area was on Thameslink around 20 years ago - dealer central (and the area was then not great) , station itself fine , but the external public realm was desperate to say the very least. Concentrated and focused police action apparently sorted it out. The old St Pancras main line station was itself "not great" , not like it is today !

I am amused to remember booking on, with many others from all over the region, at St Pancras for one of the West Hampstead PSB commissionings one Saturday evening in the late 1970s - to be told that the possession didn't start until 0245, so go and amuse yourselves

 

[Wolfie]

I am amused to remember booking on, with many others from all over the region, at St Pancras for one of the West Hampstead PSB commissionings one Saturday evening in the late 1970s - to be told that the possession didn't start until 0245, so go and amuse yourselves

Hope that you realised that you would get a rather different view, not a famous old train, if you went in the Flying Scotsman.

 

[duesselmartin]

reading this, social decline seems to be a general trend in western Europe if not beyond. Düsseldorf or Köln Hbf now have one of the hightest crime rates in Germany.

 

[Tester]

Hope that you realised that you would get a rather different view, not a famous old train, if you went in the Flying Scotsman.

It was a bit of an eye opener

 

[Bletchleyite]

reading this, social decline seems to be a general trend in western Europe if not beyond. Düsseldorf or Köln Hbf now have one of the hightest crime rates in Germany.

Hamburg Hbf was a dump in 1999-2000 when I was a regular. It remains the only place where I have witnessed open injection of hard drugs* in a public place. Indeed one recollection is of the whistle being blown for a train to depart and some junkie immediately rushing out from the toilet of that train onto the platform with a needle still hanging out of his arm.

That said, when I was a slack bladdered little kid I "might" sometimes have, er, watered the bushes behind the old shelter at Aughton Park once or twice while waiting for my school train, and there were often discarded needles there too. I never saw someone actually injecting there, though. And that's about as posh as it gets this side of Didsbury, St. Albans or Gerrards Cross.

What sadly does seem to be the case in much of Europe, sadly, is that illegal immigration from primarily parts of Africa has resulted in elevated crime levels from groups of lads hanging around who cannot work due to their immigration status so only have the option of crime. Europe really needs to get more of a handle on that (and it's many times worse than the similar problem in the UK involving "the boats") but it's not an easy problem to solve.

* Well, obviously I didn't ask them or test what it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't insulin, that being about the only thing that medical necessity means it is frequently injected in public as a matter of course.

 

[The exile]

reading this, social decline seems to be a general trend in western Europe if not beyond. Düsseldorf or Köln Hbf now have one of the hightest crime rates in Germany.

Isn’t that one of those examples of misleading statistics? Somewhere has to have the highest crime rate and a busy railway station has probably been a good candidate ever since they were invented. Areas like red light districts (which one might at first assume would be up there) have usually had their own methods of policing. General lawlessness in such areas suggests that the incumbent enforcer is losing his grip.

 

[Wolfie]

It was a bit of an eye opener

Haha

 

[YorkshireBear]

reading this, social decline seems to be a general trend in western Europe if not beyond. Düsseldorf or Köln Hbf now have one of the hightest crime rates in Germany.

Doesn't that depend how you measure it?

I had read that as an absolute Köln HBF had the highest crime in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Not all of Germany, but that per passenger Aachen and Hamm were both worse. I also am certain I remember reading that more than half the crimes recorded at Köln Hbf in the crime statistics were actually fare evasion style crimes.... Which I think we can agree (could be wrong) is not the sort of thing this thread was talking about?

 

[Starmill]

What sadly does seem to be the case in much of Europe, sadly, is that illegal immigration from primarily parts of Africa has resulted in elevated crime levels from groups of lads hanging around who cannot work due to their immigration status so only have the option of crime. Europe really needs to get more of a handle on that (and it's many times worse than the similar problem in the UK involving "the boats") but it's not an easy problem to solve.

Spain has made a lot of effort to get people into decent accommodation (potentially shared, but at least safe) and into work, even if it's poorly paid work, at least it's something.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

* Well, obviously I didn't ask them or test what it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't insulin, that being about the only thing that medical necessity means it is frequently injected in public as a matter of course.

One obvious indicator is that insulin is not (routinely) taken intravenously. Nowadays few if any diabetics will use syringes anyway, it'd be a 'pen' device. I'm pretty sure you can't get smack cartridges for those!

 

[Mikey C]

Doesn't that depend how you measure it?

I had read that as an absolute Köln HBF had the highest crime in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Not all of Germany, but that per passenger Aachen and Hamm were both worse. I also am certain I remember reading that more than half the crimes recorded at Köln Hbf in the crime statistics were actually fare evasion style crimes.... Which I think we can agree (could be wrong) is not the sort of thing this thread was talking about?

I spent a night in Köln last summer, and didn't feel at all unsafe around the station.

 

[1D54]

I spent a night in Köln last summer, and didn't feel at all unsafe around the station.

Köln Hbf has certainly improved over the last couple of years but Saturday can be a problem what with football fans descending on the place for change of trains or playing in the city but i suppose it's a problem all over big european countries with big stations.

 

[MattSGB]

Köln Hbf has certainly improved over the last couple of years but Saturday can be a problem what with football fans descending on the place for change of trains or playing in the city but i suppose it's a problem all over big european countries with big stations.

Are you saying that football fans are the main problem with Köln HBF? Look, there's a squirrel!

 

[1D54]

Are you saying that football fans are the main problem with Köln HBF? Look, there's a squirrel!

Speaking from experience on a couple of dozen occasions when things have got out of hand with them on a Saturday and local security dont want to know.

 

[Norm_D_Ploom]

Just found this thread having booked a holiday via Es to Brussels. Slightly concerned about the comments around the stations on the city !!

For what it's worth surprised Köln and Essen getting mentioned.

 

[riceuten]

Just found this thread having booked a holiday via Es to Brussels. Slightly concerned about the comments around the stations on the city !!

For what it's worth surprised Köln and Essen getting mentioned.

If you are moving on via the tube/tram or a connecting train from Midi, you've nothing to worry about.

For Koeln, I normally get hassled when putting luggage in the left luggage machines - normally a "Lass'mich in ruhe" (leave me alone) suffices. The rest of the station - and it is massive - is fine. You're certainly spoiled for choice regarding food. The bookshop (over 2 floors) has a fine collection of railway publications (and magazines) if that's your bag.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Apr 2026 ==

It was set a little earlier but the film Mona Lisa summed up the Kings Cross area in the 90s/early 00s very well.

I used to live in that area and the depiction was somewhat of an exaggeration...there were more ladies of the night in front of the station rather than the bridge behind it, and many more drug dealers than depicted. One of the local police told me that some of their number would drive the former out into the sticks in the middle of the night and drop them off - 3 or 4 times later, they got the message.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Apr 2026 ==

Never had any real incidents or threatening situations anywhere in Europe besides some stations or their suroindings lookinga bit dodgy, but back in 2012 just after exiting Milano Centrale with some luggage (there were 3 of us) was followed by a small group of who looked like an organised gang of pickpockets. It was not a very pleasant first experience of this great city. Right after arriving via the main train station I git followed by a bunch of pickpockets trying to snatch something from me and not even trying to disguise themselves too much. All in broad daylight. My subsequent visits to Milan (in 2025) and the very same Milano Centrale were much better and did not involve pickpockets or anything of the sort. I take it that I was either very unlucky back in 2012 or that things have improved in 2025.

In recent visits to Milan, the main issue for me has been people hassling you at the ticket machines - either distraction pickpocketing or trying to avail themselves of the money you have or cards - big police presence outside the station and on the concourse, otherwise - seems like a bit of an omission

 

[Norm_D_Ploom]

If you are moving on via the tube/tram or a connecting train from Midi, you've nothing to worry about.

Thanks.
Return journey will involve a short transit from close to Central

 

[Recessio]

One tends to forget how awful the old Pentonville Road station area was on Thameslink around 20 years ago - dealer central (and the area was then not great) , station itself fine , but the external public realm was desperate to say the very least. Concentrated and focused police action apparently sorted it out. The old St Pancras main line station was itself "not great" , not like it is today !

I remember hearing stories from a ex-BR man about using an old signallers lamp to light up any "undesirables" that they wanted to leave the stations.

My dad used to work on Pentonville Road in the 1980s-90s and said they had to go to an ATM in groups of three: even if you went as a pair, let alone on your own, there's a chance you'd get jumped. He'd also see loads of discarded kit kat wrappers where people were stealing them for the tinfoil, which might explain why it was 'dealer central'! A few pubs still used to do IRA collections too, and of course there was the aforementioned Flying Scotsman.

It's quite astonishing walking around the new developments now. Absolutely miles away from the days of raves at Bagleys etc.