Weary Migrants Show Relief as They Reach Austria Safely
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Version 0 of 1. NICKELSDORF, Austria — The safer they finally felt, the calmer the thousands of refugees who crossed into Austria from Hungary on Saturday became. In the orderly lanes of this small Austrian border town, where hundreds jammed the tiny train station Saturday morning, many seemed to leave behind the world of war and hardship that had driven them this far, and begin the adaptation to a new, more structured way of life where they had arrived. They submitted without complaint to police measures to keep them behind barriers, in a polite line to board trains to Vienna. Only hours earlier, as the first of an estimated 4,000 people started to stream into the no man’s land between Hungary and Austria in pouring rain around 5 a.m., life had been a jostling scramble for speed and survival. New arrivals took bananas, fruit, clothes and shoes offered by Austrian and Hungarian volunteers. Forced to get off Hungarian buses and walk through 500 yards of soggy land and hard tarmac to Austria, they dashed across the crossing, but shouted “Thank you!” as, against all odds, they reached a safe and desired stop. Soaked through, dazed and with many limping after walking 24 miles or more on Friday, they jostled around the first buses that arrived to take them to the trains. But then things settled down. And the buses pulled out. At least one convoy of some 15 double-decker tourist buses ferried passengers straight to Vienna’s main station for trains going farther west to Germany. The rest went to Nickelsdorf, where Helmut Marban, chief spokesman for the police in Austria’s easternmost province of Burgenland, surveyed the station scene — a landscape of screaming or laughing children, exhausted mothers and legions of men who say they seek work or at least an escape from fighting. Many combed through and selected clothes, shoes and blankets brought in by volunteers, something that would allow them to get out of their rain-soaked clothes. Nearby, Georg Schneider, 40, a freelance video programmer from Vienna, was handing out clothes and food. He had seen on Twitter that the refugees would arrive overnight, and left home at 5 a.m. with his offerings. “Austria is slow, but ready to help,” he said, alluding to the country’s reputation for suspicion of foreigners, which recently has kindled right-wing, anti-immigrant parties, as well as a historical willingness to help the needy. For Mr. Marban, the scene was satisfying. “The challenges for everybody — physical and mental — are huge,” he noted. Yet migrants, police, railway employees and dozens of citizen volunteers seemed happy to meet them, he said. Earlier, Mr. Marban’s boss, the Burgenland police chief Hans Peter Doskozil, had stood in the rain at the Nickelsdorf border crossing. A burly man with decades of service, he had been up all night. At some point — “was it 1 or 2 a.m., I can’t remember” — his Hungarian colleagues had made it clear there would be no avoiding the trek across no man’s land for the migrants. “So, we have to come up with another solution,” he said stoically, outlining what at that point seemed an unlikely hope of bus service that would work. After their often-harrowing journeys, the migrants were not bothered. Many conversations with them were fractured, but went like this: “Work, big city, Germany,” and a thumbs up, which was how Mustafa Hadji, 22, from Damascus described his hopes for the future. Challenges far bigger than those observed by Mr. Marban loom for European and other world governments suddenly motivated to act to alleviate some of the searing pain of Syria’s war, which has sent 4 million refugees in neighboring countries, and displaced millions more inside the country. What will happen next week, when Hungary says it will tighten its border with Serbia? Will migrants shift to Hungary’s borders with Croatia, Slovenia or Romania? Just how many newcomers can even wealthy Germany absorb? Might Europe’s divided leaders agree on common standards and actions? Hazem 23, a chemistry student from Damascus who declined to give his last name, seemed unfazed by such questions. He and his four companions, ages 17, 19 and two 21, were among the first to show at the Nickelsdorf border crossing Saturday, swiftly charging cellphones and calling home. All had been on the road since Aug. 3 and said they had walked almost 40 kilometers, about 24 miles, Friday before boarding the bus that took them close to Hungary’s border town of Hegyeshalom. There, Burgenland police picked them up — as they have so many thousands of others in recent months — gave them food, drink, shelter and time to contemplate whether to apply for asylum in Austria or head for the real goal, Germany. “We hope to go to Germany to continue our study,” said Hazem in his decent English. Kindness, he said, had marked stages of his journey by plane to Beirut, ferry to Istanbul, and on through Greek islands and mainland to Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, where, he said, they “unfortunately” spent eight days, finally deciding simply to walk toward Austria. “I think we’ll keep walking to the United States,” he grinned. “Oh, oops, there is a sea in the way.” |