Berlin train station turns into a refugee town for Ukrainians
Every other hour, another packed train from Poland arrives at Berlin's main train station filled with hundreds of Ukrainian refugees, mostly mothers and their children looking for a safe place away from the brutal war in their home country.
As they spilled out of the trains on Tuesday, loudspeakers blared in Ukrainian and English: “Dear refugees from Ukraine, welcome to Germany, please follow the instructions of the volunteers in the yellow and orange vests.”
Spread across the platforms, a small army of volunteers in bright-colored vests appeared — yellow for those who speak German, English and other languages, orange for Ukrainian and Russian speakers — ready to maneuver the exhausted masses through the maze of Berlin's sleek and shiny glassand-steel railway station into the building's basement.
The operation runs so smoothly that the seemingly endless stream of refugees goes largely unnoticed to the city's tens of thousands of regular commuters making their way through the station's five levels. Most don't even know of the sprawling refugee town that has sprung up in the station basement.
Vadim, a 17-year-old teenager who came on his own from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, traveled for three days and nights before arriving in Berlin on Tuesday afternoon. “No sleep,” is all he said, a tired, petrified look in his eyes.
When asked where his parents were, the teen, who gave only his first name, simply shrugged his shoulders, grabbed a dirty backpack and slowly walked away.
Like Vadim, most refugees were too exhausted and traumatized to say much. Their frightened looks seemed to reflect the horrors of war. They sat huddled on long rows of wooden beer benches and tables, tightly holding onto plastic bags, school backpacks or duffel bags containing the few belongings they packed before fleeing the wailing sirens, detonating missiles and hastily arranged funerals back home.
Some 160,000 Ukrainian refugees have been officially registered in Germany, but their real numbers are thought to be much higher as Ukrainians can enter Germany without visas and there are no thorough controls along the Polish-German border.
Berlin has become the No. 1 gateway for tens of thousands of refugees, with around 7,500 arriving at the train station every day. Because city officials were initially slow to react to the massive influx, thousands of volunteers have stepped up to help cater to the refugees' every needs.
They take the new arrivals from station platforms to a waiting area in the basement next to a McDonald's. There, an entire refugee town opens up: Volunteers hand out food and hot drinks, stands offer free shampoo, diapers, tampons, sanitary napkins and other hygiene supplies. A nursing tent is set up for moms wanting to breastfeed their babies. There is a safe zone for children with toys and boxes full of secondhand clothes, as well as volunteers offering pet food for the many dogs and cats the refugees bring with them.
There's also a stand operated by German railway company Deutsche Bahn handing out free train tickets for those who want to continue their travels to another destination. More than 100,000 tickets have been issued so far.