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Those conversations are continuing, even a week after the incident. But a sense of perspective in the international press is still largely absent. When the chief of police (who, under intense criticism, stepped down on Friday) said that anyone who did not actively stop an attack was then an accomplice to it, that didn’t mean that everyone in the crowd was actively trying to cause harm. The mayor called an emergency meeting with the police to discuss ways to prevent the area from descending into lawlessness — which it certainly isn’t, and wasn’t. Walking through the station and the area around the cathedral nearly every day, I’d never guess it was anything other than a normal European tourist spot.

That’s not to say that nothing happened. Something clearly did. Common to these areas is a scam like what you encounter on the steps in front of Sacre Coeur in Paris. Namely, one or two men approach a woman and distract her by touching or trying to dance with her while another helps himself to her valuables. Germans call it antänzen, a sort of dancing up on, the way someone might grind on a stranger at a club.

Photo by Markus Boehm / AP

Police are still working out whether there was an organized attack or not. It seems unlikely, if only because it was unnecessary. For thieves, pickings don’t get much easier than loads of drunk people in a confined space.

Where the night seems to have taken on another dimension is when people returned to the station to catch a train home. The main square in front of the station forms a natural kettle and when it is packed with people, as it was on New Year’s Eve, the only way out is on a train. And when the normally every-10-minute local trains stop running, as they did because people were walking on the tracks, the crowd can quickly become a festering mob.