Strolling around Alexanderplatz one cold but sunny afternoon, I was surprised at just how trashy it is: concrete brutalist Communist buildings surround a vast grey pedestrian area, from which long walkways lead to mediocre fast food restaurants and mid-range department stores. It's a place that feels at the same time hectic, provincial and empty; its trashiness resembles that of New York's Times Square, minus the bustle of theatregoers. Even the urban tribes—techno kids, goths in black leather trenchcoats, tramps, tourists—seem to be just passing through. And why would one want to linger? One can ascend the TV tower and have cake at the revolving restaurant on top of it. Or one can visit a recently built mall that looks like a giant concrete liverwurst imported from Baku. Such are your choices for spending an afternoon on Alexanderplatz. Only an optimist on steroids could imagine that this platz could become a social hub or even a grand European square where one dawdles instead of rushing off, while averting one's gaze from the unwelcome onslaught on one's senses.

It would be glib to assume that the recent string of violent attacks could have been fostered only by the general sense of misery that clings to the place. More pressing is the question as to whether there's a specifically German angle to this violence.

New figures have been released that suggest there's been another rise of neo-Nazi tendencies: a report from the respected Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that one sixth of East Germans support far-Right views, and that nearly 40 per cent of them have xenophobic opinions.

It must be stressed that the incidents on Alexanderplatz were not racially motivated, but were, as far as one can tell, random acts of street violence. And yet maybe the same loss of certainty that punctures the general sense of security also feeds the proclivity to lean to the far-Right.