The people in Munich, as in most of Europe’s larger cities, are very alert these days. The Munich Hauptbahnhof (central train station) was closed for several hours in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, due to a suitcase left at the station. This morning, another unattended package caused for part of the station to be closed for some time. Up to 500.000 people a day pass through the Hauptbahnhof. The Munich Central Station, as the only station in Germany, houses two police departments: The Federal Police with 300 and the Bavarian Police with 50 officials.

Munich’s police President Hubert Andrä called on the people in Munich to be alert and to contact police if they find something suspicious, and the people are doing exactly that. Fortunately, the police haven’t confirmed any danger so far, but since they take such information very seriously, they move out more and more often. Since the terror alert from Hannover on Tuesday night, the Munich Federal Police recorded a significant increase in such reports.

The Haupbahnhof is not the only place where police have been alerted about possible threats by passers-by. The Sueddeutsche.de today reports that a man suspected an apparatus installed near the Hofbräuhaus to be a bomb, when in fact it was a transformer for Christmas lights.