In 2015, millions of Syrians fled their homeland due to the ongoing war. In their wake, many Afghans, Pakistanis and Iranians joined this flow of refugees. They all came via boats to the Greek islands via Turkey, where they were sometimes held up for weeks. Yet they still managed to be taken to the Greek mainland by ferry. Very few of them applied for asylum in Greece. Almost all of them tried to travel to Western Europe via the Balkans. Their numbers were so large that the individual governments in the Balkan countries decided to use buses and trains to ensure the passage through their country as smoothly and, above all, as quickly as possible. Migrants and refugees only experienced some delays at the border crossings. Germany alone is said to have taken in about a million Syrians. Angela Merkel, who was then Chancellor, tried to reassure the German population with the now famous words: “Wie Schaffen Das.”
