8000 refugees finally arrive Munich

For weeks while they traveled a punitive road, Europe cast a cold eye on their unwelcome progress. On Saturday, for the first time since fleeing their troubled homelands, they could set foot in their promised land — and it came with a German face so friendly that it brought some newcomers to tears of joy.

Around8,000 Arab and Asian asylum seekers surged across Hungary’s western border into Austria and Germany following the latest erratic policy turn by Hungary’s immigrant-averse government. Within hours, travelers predominantly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who had been told for days they could not leave Hungary were scooped from roadsides and Budapest’s central train station and placed on overnight buses, driven to the frontier with Austria and allowed to walk across as a new day dawned.