It was 4am when the police spotted four bedraggled boys wandering in the rain along the autobahn.
Every day starts like this for the authorities in Passau, the first town in Germany across the border from Austria, where refugees are arriving on an epic scale.
For many, such as Abu Bakar, 17, and his three travelling companions, their families had paid thousands of dollars to get them to Germany from Afghanistan, a trek of more than 6,000km. “There were about 30 of us in the van. They put us out on the road,” the teenager said yesterday, after grabbing a few hours’ rest in a room full of camp beds at Passau’s arrivals centre for unaccompanied youngsters. Two of his friends were aged 15 and one only 13.
“I did not know if we were in Austria or Germany but we were so happy to be in Germany. It is a place for living. I think I will stay here for ever,” Abu said.
Until this summer, Passau was a gentle bywater in the far southeastern corner of Germany. Its population of 50,000 was swelled only by tourists because of its seat on the confluence of three rivers, including the Danube.
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Like other border points around the continent, this year it has been transformed into a heaving junction for the unprecedented movement of migrants. The biggest headache for the hard-pressed authorities in Passau is not the sheer number of arrivals — 680 turned up on Wednesday — but the 20 to 25 unaccompanied youngsters such as Abu among them every day.
They are mostly boys aged from 14 to 17 from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, but younger children are not uncommon. In June an Afghan teenager arrived carrying his one-year-old brother after they became separated from their parents somewhere along the well-trodden path through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Hungary and Austria.
Passau finds itself on one of the two main migration routes into Germany — the other is north from the Mediterranean through Italy. The steady rise in asylum seekers has led Europe’s largest economy to raise its national forecast from 450,000 to 800,000 this year.
In the touristy Bavarian university town, police, the youth service, doctors, schools, courts and church groups are at full stretch. Even the prisons are overflowing, with up to 15 people-smugglers arrested every day for driving cars and vans crammed with migrants that usually load up in Hungary.
While adults and family groups are quickly processed and moved on to regional reception centres — thanks to 200 extra , police drafted in from all over Germany — the law dictates that the town must deal with the unaccompanied youngsters itself.
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After a few hours on makeshift beds at the arrivals centre, the adolescents are sent to “clearing houses” where they stay for four to six weeks while their educational and health needs are identified. Then they go on to children’s homes around the region and start school. Passau is putting on 40 classes for non-German speakers next month.
Money saved for flooding emergencies is being diverted to pay for the migrants. “The numbers keep increasing each month,” Lothar Kaseder, the head of youth work in Passau, said. “It is our duty to take in the unaccompanied adolescents. Last year we had 400. This year we have already had 1,300.”
Most face a longterm future in an institution. Mr Kaseder has only 12 families on his books willing to foster an adolescent migrant.
Anne-Kathrin Schmieg, from the Caritas group that runs a clearing house for teenage asylum seekers, said that many had trouble sleeping after their journeys: “They experienced a lot of suffering, a lot of deprivation, even starvation. Most of them have walked a lot, several thousand kilometres.”
Abu Bakar said his journey cost $4,300, paid to people traffickers. Ms Schmieg said teenagers often came alone because their family could afford to pay for only one person to escape.
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“One boy’s family from Afghanistan collected money from the whole village so he could leave,” she said. “The Taliban took revenge on the father and blinded him.”