Migrants walk on a platform at the railway station in Saalfeld, eastern Germany, on September 5, 2015, after their arrival with a special train from Austria. (AFP Photo)
Germans waving welcome signs in German, English and Arabic came to the train station here Saturday to greet the first group of what is expected to be about 8,000 migrants to arrive in Germany by early Sunday, after an arduous and emotional journey through Hungary and Austria.
Germans applauded and volunteers offered hot tea, food and toys as about 450 migrants arrived on a special train service from Austria, finally reaching Germany, which held out an open hand to them.
"Thank you, Germany," said one woman from the Kurdish part of northern Iraq who said she had been on the road for a month and a half with her two children.
A German volunteer, Silvia Reinschmiedt, who runs a local school, could not stay at home. "I said to myself, I have to do something," she said as she handed out warm drinks.
By Saturday evening, about 6,000 migrants had arrived here, and another 1,800 were expected to arrive in trains overnight, according to the German police.
It was the desired destination for an extraordinary march of migrants, who broke through Hungarian obstacles and reached Austria on Saturday morning after a night of frantic negotiations among German, Austrian and Hungarian officials cleared the way.
Overnight, some 4,500 exhausted migrants were bused to the Austrian border by a Hungarian government that gave up trying to stop them and instead decided to help them travel in safety. That help was temporary, however, as Hungary found itself struggling to cope with a new influx of migrants.
The arrival in Germany of the migrants was the culmination of 10 days of tragedy and emotion that at last caught the world's attention, as war and chaos in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East set off one of the largest emigrations since World War II.
Even as the thousands made it to Austria on buses provided by the Hungarian government, on Saturday morning a new group of about 1,000 migrants set off on foot from the Budapest train station, Keleti, on their own march to the border.
© 2015, The New York Times News Service