Germany a welcome new reality, for those who make it
MUNICH, Germany -- Migrants on the march in Hungary squared off against police again Tuesday, determined to walk all the way to Germany if necessary. Tens of thousands continue to pour into Hungary, primarily from neighboring Serbia.
But Hungary's government is rushing to build a fence along the border with Austria, the next step along the route to the wealthy nations of western Europe. Most of those making the trek are aiming for Germany.
CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports that, if they make it, the way they're treated in Europe's most prosperous nation could not be more different from the harsh cajoling they met in Hungary.
The thousands who have arrived are taken to a convention center in Munich and given a cot for a night or two before they travel onward.
Among those seeking temporary refuge at the center this week is 16-year-old Jawan Kamal from Aleppo, Syria. D'Agata and his team found Kamal on the train to Germany, and recognized him as the same young man they had first met on the Greek island of Lesbos, just after he'd survived the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey.
Germany expects to take in some 800,000 migrants and refugees this year, and has said it could make room for even more.
"I'm so happy, like, I'm safe right now," the teenager told CBS News. And now, for the first time in a long time, he has options, and after the rough trip and less than hospitable treatment along the way, that has come has something of a surprise.
"Because like, you feel a little, like free here, they're nice people, they're treating you nice," Kamal told D'Agata.
Having escaped a brutal civil war at home and survived the hardships of his perilous journey, the Syrian teen dreams of the day his family can be reunited in Germany.
Asked by D'Agata whether he dared to think even as far as two or three years down the road, what might become of him, Kamal exuded his new-found optimism.
"I'm gonna have, like, school, after school the university (sic). Maybe I'm gonna get a car, yeah, in a couple years."
Already, Kamal's is a success story; one of the thousands now providing hope for the tens of thousands more still struggling to survive in war zones, or stuck along the route to the promised land of western Europe.