After Angela Merkel snub, refugee bus sent home

A bus that carried 31 Syrian refugees to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in protest returned on Friday to the small town that organised the road trip widely condemned as a political stunt.

The Bavarian district chief behind Thursday’s journey to Berlin, Peter Dreier, had called it an “act of desperation” as his southern rural area buckled under the strain of a mass influx that brought 1.1 million migrants to Germany in 2015.

The coach had arrived on Friday evening after a 570 kilometre trip outside the chancellery building. Ms Merkel declined to send her staff to negotiate with the provincial official.

Berlin city representatives instead went on board and offered the group of men emergency accommodation for a night.

In absurd scenes, some 100 journalists, as well as a sprinkling of anti-Merkel protesters, stayed in a throng around the coach for two hours, while tense-faced Berlin and Bavarian officials negotiated inside, and refugees watched the TV cameras with anguished expressions.

In the end, the bus left with a police escort, and Mr Dreier told the press he was disappointed Ms Merkel’s people hadn’t come to talk to him.

He said he would pay for a night in a hotel for the group, out of his own pocket.

On Friday morning, the bus was back on the road to Bavaria, to the southern town of Landshut, which had organised the high-profile trip — with the refugees inside described as angry and disappointed.

Berlin mayor Michael Maeller called the trip a sign of a “breakdown of solidarity”.