Hi, I'm Lukas from DW Travel and today I'm at the former Berlin Tegel airport.
I’ve also flown in and out here a couple of times.
There were regular flight operations until November 2020.
Then the airport was closed.
And now it's open again so to say,
but not for planes and travelers from all over the world but for refugees from Ukraine.
I want to know what things are looking like at Tegel now.
In the old days, more than 20 million travelers passed through the airport every year.
Berliners loved their Tegel Airport.
Now, it's been set up as an arrival point for refugees in double quick time.
Several hundred people arrive here every day, almost a third of them are children.
Where do you come from right now?
We came from Ukraine, from Kharkiv.
And we got to Poland and then came to Germany.
How long was the whole trip and how was it for you?
The whole trip took us five days.
We had some time to stay in Poland because we had some time to take a rest.
Until the moment we started our trip we didn't sleep until we got to Poland. It was like that.
How did you make it?
Like: Ok, I have to go right now because the bombing is too heavy? How was that for you?
The situation was like that we actually planned a trip to western part of Ukraine on February 25th.
So it was preplanned. But unfortunately we couldn't make it.
Because there were a lot of people and a bomb actually exploded not far from our house.
So we were afraid to go outside. And then, on the first of March, we decided that it's enough.
And the very day they bombed the city center of our beautiful Kharkiv, yes.
The head of the arrival center, Detlef Cwojdzinski leads me through the old airport terminal.
He's retired, but for the former local health authority crisis manager, this isn't a moment to be putting your feet up.
Ideally, refugees won't need to spend more than three days here.
The center is designed as a stopover only.
Five German aid organisations, with a staff of 250 work here.
Many of them are volunteers.
The German army is here too. It's the soldiers job to register the arrivals.
The arrival center is undergoing continual expansion.
The German Red Cross has set up a mobile clinic on the old runway to administer medical care.
The clinic is technically well-equipped, for example to carry out ultrasound test or check heart function.
Beds have been installed in the terminal, and outside in tents.
There could eventually be several thousand of them.
So far, only a few people have needed to stay the night here in Berlin.
Most are continuing their journey to other places across Germany.
It's amazing what has been achieved here in such short time.
Berlin has turned an old airport into a hub for refugees.
On the one hand I am happy that this works so well.
On the other hand I'm sad that it's necessary at all to prepare this place for refugees.
Where once planes took off to holiday destinations,
buses now depart with refugees, heading into an uncertain future.