New fortified security measures at Berlin Christmas market.

All week, workers have been installing 160 giant, square, lattice-work frames on the perimeter of Charlottenburg’s Breitscheidplatz, the site of the fatal attack.

Enormous sand-and-stone-filled bags have been lowered into each frame, which have all been bolted to the next to form a long row. Narrow access points have been protected with extra bollards.

During the market, private guards will patrol the grounds, joined by a heavy presence of uniformed and plainclothes police officers.

The Berlin Senate has said the elaborate €2.5 million ($2.9 million) installation will provide “unprecedented protection” against trucks weighing up to 40 tons.

This reminds me of German oddity 234. Germany is a country that now places the ugly security controls, bollards and heavily armed police it used to have on its national borders at Christmas markets and Volksfeste around the country instead.