Perhaps there were fewer people this Saturday, December 21. Perhaps later statistics will put these streets black with visitors into perspective. The day after the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, this day is like all the others since the city center of Strasbourg plunged into the deep end of Christmas. With the same faces as before, rather smiling, even radiant, sometimes tense for those who have the delicate mission of finding a match for their loved ones, a head full of gift ideas.
It couldn't be otherwise: “If it's to get scared or even have dark thoughts, there's no point in immersing yourself in this atmosphere,” summarizes Victor, a visitor from Lille, as he tries his hand at the street food of Christmas.
Strasbourg like a defended fortress
Faced with the anxieties that could arouse or resuscitate the Magdeburg attack, Strasbourg remains the fortress clad in defenders, with numerous drawbridges and deep moats. Further reinforced this year, the security system put in place around the city's Christmas market should not harm the warm and festive vocation of the Christmas capital.
If you do not enter the Grande-Île by tram, you inevitably come up against chicanes, portcullises, retractable bollards and other aggregates of devices which transform every access to the city center, or almost, into an insurmountable obstacle. . Just like in Colmar or Mulhouse, where portcullises have been deployed on the passageways.
Of course, we will come across security guards, but they are not more vigilant today than yesterday, nor less.
The suitcases are searched, the bag carriers are not worried and we quickly forget the fortifications to be caught up in the party and the commerce. “Sometimes I come across people who say they are a little worried, but I’ve been hearing them for a long time,” confides a security guard. The security organization was obviously not worried. Except for one or two details.
Far from mind
“This morning was the first time that the police checked me at the wheel of my vehicle, while I was driving within the protected area,” testifies Gaurab, who manages a bar near the Ancienne Douane. Usually this is not the case. Maybe they did it because it was market day? » In his establishment, the Magdeburg attack does not seem to frighten the customers. “Right now, I don't feel like people are worried or talking about it. The Strasbourg market is one of the few to be extremely secure, between the portcullises and the bollards which isolate the streets blackest with visitors on the island. »
Near rue du 22-Novembre, the manager of another food business also notes the good level of protection of the Strasbourg market. “We are never safe from bad intentions: someone could park in the underground car park before the isolation of the city center and take their car out in the middle of the market. You just shouldn't think about it, if only because no one thinks about it during the Christmas festivities. Even if the memory of the attack committed in Strasbourg in 2018 remains very vivid,” he comments.
In streets that become more and more crowded as the day progresses, exchanges prioritize the quest for a good mulled wine or the search for a seat in a restaurant. At the Advent market, near Petite France, Claude, who keeps an eye on his pot of hot apple juice, knows almost nothing about Magdeburg. “It was the security guard who told me about it this morning. But around me, no one talks about it. What happened there cannot happen in Strasbourg. »
