Hungary ‘ really cool this week’

Returning Syrian refugee competes at swimming worlds

Two years on from sleeping rough in Budapest on a perilous trek from Syria to Germany, teenage refugee Yusra Mardini is back in the Hungarian capital competing in the world swimming championships.

“I promised myself I’d come back to Budapest another way,” the 19- year- old told reporters on Sunday after fi nishing her 100- meter butterfl y heat.

Now based in Berlin, Mardini gained international attention after surviving neardrowning trying to reach Greece in 2015.

A year later she won her heat in the Rio Olympic Games as part of the Games’ fi rst- ever refugee team.

During a 25- day journey from her war- ravaged homeland, Mardini used her swimming skills to help drag a leaking dinghy carrying 16 people to the Greek shore, after the engine broke down.

“My sister [ Sara] jumped into the water fi rst, then I jumped in after her, [ with two men] we had one hand each on the boat and tried to swim and kick to shore,” she said.

After more than three hours in the water they arrived on the island of Lesbos, and trekked northwards before getting stuck in Budapest for a week.

Hungary became a hot spot of the migration crisis in mid2015, after the authorities temporarily blocked onward travel to neighboring Austria and Germany, which transformed Budapest’s railway stations into vast makeshift refugee camps.

The country’s fi ercely antiimmigration Prime Minister Viktor Orban later erected razor- wire fences along the southern borders to keep out migrants altogether.

“Then, I thought that people were really rude, my coach was afraid, when I said I was going to go back [ to Budapest] again, but now it’s completely diff erent, so I changed my point of view about the people of Hungary, it’s really cool this week,” she said.

After Rio, which she called “a dream come true,” she says she is “excited and happy” to swim in another major meet, where she also competes in the 200- meter freestyle discipline.

In Berlin she focuses on swimming and learning German, and hopes one day to fulfi l another dream: swimming for Syria.