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Frankfurt / Main (dpa / lhe) - The man is half sitting, half lying on the bench of a bus stop in the Frankfurt district of Rödelheim, slumped and motionless despite the traffic noise and the street lighting around him.
A few meters away from the homeless, Johannes Heuser parked the cold bus of the Frankfurt Association for Social Homes, while his colleague Elfi Ilgmann-Weiß approaches the man carefully.
But she receives no answer.
After examining the clothes of the resting person, she takes a blue blanket out of the car and spreads it over the homeless person.
What she's doing here is probably not visible to a woman on the opposite side of the street, because a resolute voice echoed through the darkness from an open window: "Leave the man alone!"
“Everything's fine - we're from the cold bus, we just want to help!” Ilgmann-Weiß calls back.
She feels that the reaction from across the street is mostly positive.
"It's good that there are people who take a closer look when there are homeless people in their area."
The work of the cold bus also benefits from this.
“We have already received 122 reports from citizens since October 13,” says Heuser.
The callers can call a central number so that the social workers of the two cold buses, which are looking for sleeping places for homeless people night after night from mid-October, can also add “new ones” to their rounds.
Because when Heuser and Ilgmann-Weiß or other of their colleagues leave, they not only have tea and a few snacks with them, but also sleeping bags, sleeping mats and blankets with them.
Orange armbands identify them as employees.
It is a low-threshold offer for the 70 to 80 people who stay outdoors in Frankfurt even in winter.
When the two social workers are out and about with mouth and nose protection because of the corona pandemic, they consider the risk that the people they care for are at risk is rather low.
“Our people tend to be loners,” says Heuser.
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Many, especially of the German homeless people who slept outdoors, had psychological problems.
The situation of Eastern and Southeastern Europeans, who have made up a larger group of homeless people since EU enlargement, is somewhat different.
The man at the bus stop also has mental problems.
“We have known him for many years,” says Ilgmann-Weiß.
"When he's awake, he likes to talk a lot - but most of it is pretty confused."
If they find homeless people sleeping, they shouldn't be disturbed.
Anyone who reacts to the speech is offered a hot tea, a sleeping bag or a blanket.
Other social workers who can visit the homeless during the day are responsible for offers of help that go beyond pure emergency care.
On the cold nights in autumn and winter, one thing above all has priority: Nobody should freeze to death.
Most of those who are visited that night react rather monosyllabically, if they are found at their sleeping places at all.
Heuser carefully shines a torch into the bushes of a church property in Höchst.
A woman has set up a sheltered camp at this point and has probably tried to make everything a bit cozy: solar lanterns still shimmer faintly in the branches, two angel figures and a candle are set up on a table, and a well-donated Advent calendar hangs above it.
Only nothing can be seen of the resident.
“We'll stop by again in the next few days to see if she's okay,” says Ilgmann-Weiß.
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The 18-year-old Dominik, whom the two social workers meet in a covered staircase, is rather atypical.
The young man with the dark curly hair reacts embarrassed: "I haven't cleaned up here yet."
He gladly accepts the tea and sleeping bag offered.
Actually, he is not a real homeless person, he says.
"I sleep with my mother."
But he is here to take care of his father, who has his sleeping place here.
He protects himself against the cold at night with four T-shirts, two jackets and a sweater.
The year of the corona pandemic is particularly difficult for people without a roof over their heads, says the young Croat.
"In the first lockdown there was nothing to earn for the bottle collectors, and now it's got worse again."
Heuser and Ilgmann-Weiß promise to come by again soon to check on their father.
Then it goes back towards downtown Frankfurt.
A homeless man lives in the porch of a S-Bahn station, but that evening his camp site is orphaned.
The blanket is neatly folded, a paper plate and a coffee mug suggest that the resident may appear again soon.
The advertising wall behind the sleeping area, where a hotel draws attention to itself, looks like bitter irony: "If you sleep elsewhere, it's your own fault."