The Eurocity 248 from Warsaw, with which 1000 refugees from Ukraine are expected, is 55 minutes late.

Friday morning, Berlin Central Station, platform 13: A silver-grey train slowly pushes along the platform.

The doors open.

"Welcome," says a loudspeaker voice in Ukrainian.

Julia Schaaf

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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A Deutsche Bahn employee lifts a kindergarten-age girl off the train.

She gently takes it by the arms and parks it at a safe distance from the train until the rest of the family has got off.

With the carefully coiffed hair, her uniform and a burgundy pillbox hat, the woman looks like the ambassador of a perfect world where peace reigns and everything is fine.

The end of a hard journey

What the girl experienced, what all the other children, men and women who are now gradually getting off the train have to do with - you can't imagine it.

Some have sleeping mats tied to their backpacks, someone is carrying a blanket over their arm.

Many have trolley cases with them, others stuffed shopping bags.

Some come with next to nothing.

A mother holds her sleeping toddler in her arms.

A ten-year-old who is traveling with her little brother, grandma and great-grandmother carries a cage with two rats.

A young woman has put on fresh make-up, but her eyes still look as if she has cried a lot.

There are men too, but fewer.

Volunteers in high-visibility vests, who show on a strip of masking tape on their chests whether they speak Ukrainian or Russian, guide the newcomers to the escalator.

"Don't ask people what happened," she was instructed.

Down from the platform, past people wearing high-visibility vests who point the way, past stands with a Ukrainian flag and instructions in three languages, to an area on the first basement level that is normally little used because there is only the transition to the subway located.

"I know it sounds stupid," said a woman when instructing the helpers: "But like in the vaccination center." Can you learn from one crisis for the next?

"Tell them not to be afraid"

In any case, the improvised welcome center at the main train station looks impressively well organized.

The Berlin City Mission is giving away SIM cards, and there is a food stand between platforms 4 and 5 where onward travelers can stock up on provisions.

Deutsche Bahn is constantly bringing new thermos flasks with coffee.

There is a clothes rail with winter coats and a stand with drugstore items - all donations.

"You can take all of them," says the helper to a mother with a child who has tried in vain to open a pack of tampons.

The tone is remarkably friendly.

Jannik doesn't get impatient either, although a woman from the group of new volunteers around him remarks that he cannot be understood and only the second megaphone that is handed to him works.

The twenty-six-year-old is actually studying law.

This week he “packed trucks” on Monday and Tuesday.

He has been at the train station since the truck was packed on Wednesday, only interrupted by three to four hours of sleep a night.

"We have a system," he says in wooden English and explains to the new volunteers where those traveling on from the train can get their free tickets.

That arrivals who want to stay in the city are either taken by bus to the registration office or are placed in private accommodation directly at the train station.

"Most have four or five days of travel behind them," says Jannik.

"Go around.

Ask people if they are okay.

Whether they want something to eat or drink.

Tell them everything is free.

Tell them they have time.

Tell them not to be afraid.”

"As long as it takes"

According to him, the core team of 16 volunteers, to which Jannik belongs, now coordinates up to 250 helpers a day and makes arrangements with the Senate administration and the railways.

New volunteers keep coming: 33-year-old data analyst Mariia, for example, who has been living in Germany for ten years and hopes that one day someone will help her parents who are stuck in northern Ukraine, “there is a battlefield around the city”.

Or Irina, 47, who wipes the tears from her eyes at the thought of her family in Kyiv and says: “I can't stay at home.

I have to do something."

Steffi and her seven-year-old daughter Ella are waiting behind a red and white barrier tape.

They want to take in a mother and child in their two-room apartment.

Steffi had placed her offer online, but because the mediation didn't seem to work, she simply drove to the train station.

Will Ella clear her room for the guests?

"Nope," says the girl.

“But they can sleep there.” She herself then stays with mom, where she can play with her stuffed animals in bed in the morning.

And how long do you intend to do this?

"As long as it takes."