One of my daughter's best friends was a foreign exchange student from Austria last year. She is planning to visit her in a few weeks and I'm getting concerned about all these reports of terrorist attacks in Europe lately. It seems like there's a new attack every week. I have also heard about large numbers of women being sexually assaulted. This is an international forum. How safe is Europe, and Austria in particular, these days?
Austria is safe enough. Of course, it becomes more and more unsafe with increasing migration problems, but this means that its safety maybe low in comparison with its own past. Not in comparison with other countries. Anyway, terrorism is important in the media only, not in real life. The number of victims of traffic accidents is a much more relevant number than that of victims of terrorist attacks.
That depends on what kind of security detail you are sending with her. I would be concerned regardless of terrorism.
Safer than the US. In the US, 1 in 6 women are victims of attempted or completed rape. In the EU in general, 1 in 10 women is a victim of an attempted rape, and 1 in 20 is a victim of a completed rape. And Austria is safer than average among EU states. https://www.theguardian.com/news/da...st-women-european-union-physical-sexual-abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics
I suppose if you are comfortable with the people she will be with, it's probably ok. But, I can imagine its scary. There are no guarantees. Something tragic can happen close to home just as easily as thousands of miles away. People get in car wrecks all the time. Where I live there have been a number of young people who have died in car accidents recently. Life is a risk and there is no avoiding it. But sending your child to the other end of the world to a place you do not know, is worrying for many reasons. You don't speak the language or know the customs and then there is the fact she's half a world away. A person could feel a bit helpless if, God forbid, your daughter should go missing or have some kind of trouble. But then as parents we have to let go at some point, they have to live their own lives. But if you are not ready for that, I recommend a good Austrian security service or you may want to consider an Austrian vacation. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I also recommend not watching any of the Hostel movies. Below is link which shows what the State Department has to say about travel in Austria. https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/austria.html
She will be considerably safer than in the USA. The rate of gun deaths per year in the USA is about 100 times higher than in Austria.
If we let the current group of arseholes dictate how and where we travel, they have won. Common sense reigns supreme, or at least should. Of course we do have "occupied" areas that are "no go" zones. The government in Australia has a nice little slogan I like and see as appropriate: "BE ALERT, NOT ALARMED"
If you're only going by the stats of the country as a whole, Austria is far safer than the US. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Austria/United-States/Crime If you know the area she's going to be in, you might want to compare the local crime figures of that area to those of your own locality. But bear in mind that far more people in the US and in the EU are killed by cars than terrorists. And again in this area the US is far worse than Austria - US has double the death rate from road traffic accidents - http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A997 Basically I would say that if you feel safe in the US then you should feel safe in Austria.
Well here's the thing, guns aren't the only way to kill people and you don't have to kill someone to hurt them.
They do, but neither Austria nor the US has undergone such a significant change in the past couple of years to make those stats not in some way indicative of the current state, at least relatively speaking. But again, this is looking at the countries as a whole, not the specific locations to be visited, where there can be wide variations from the country averages.
