The inn, the grocer's, the baker's, and the post office have all closed. The village plane tree and the well were replaced by car-parking spaces a long time ago. Today people shop in the nearest shopping centre or on-line. The bus stop is only used when the children are on their way to school. In peripheral regions the village square is no longer a place where people spend time, let alone a centre for meetings between different types of people - it is merely a transit space. In the 1930s in the village of Klein-Meiseldorf in the Waldviertel, as well as numerous farmers there were also many traditional small businesses: baker, bookbinder, butcher, innkeeper, tailor and cobbler, a general store, midwife, smith, carpenter and a wainwright. The last local business closed in the 1980s, the federal railways stopped operating the train station about five years ago. The population 90 years ago was around 600, today it is barely 400.
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