Ghost ride through Switzerland

It is cold this morning in the Rhine Valley. The Säntis is snowy and commuters rush through the train station in Buchs SG.

The passengers on the adjacent platform behave differently, noticeably differently: they get off the night train from Vienna slowly and anxiously. Thin jackets envelop their thin bodies. Almost all men. You travel without luggage. Most only have a smartphone with them.

They seem like ghosts passing by, refugees from Afghanistan, migrants from Tunisia, India or Bangladesh, silent and dumb, who under no circumstances want to attract attention, but move on as quickly as possible. “France, France” or “Hamburg, Berlin” they name as travel destinations. They don’t seem to speak English anymore.

The Swiss border guards took 80 of them off the train, who are now lined up against a wall. Usually they stare at the ground in silence, waiting for what’s to come. The routine of the border guards shows that this spectacle has been going on here for a long time. For a long time it went unnoticed by the public.

Onward travel to neighboring countries is made easy

Today there is also a family. That’s rare. The child, one and a half years old, looks sleepy, his pants are wet. The family from Tunisia has no change of clothes or diapers with them. After all, the border guards ask the three of them to go to the customs office first.

Fingerprints, personal data, a search database – while the official procedure inside begins, the next night train is already entering the border station outside. However, there is now a lack of staff to check this as well. Migrants entering from Croatia remain unchecked.

After fifteen minutes the first men leave the office. They seem surprised that they are allowed to leave again, they hardly leave the place indecisive. Tension gradually eases, some begin to joke, offer their jackets in return, say “Armani Afghanistan” and point to holes from which the inner liner is already oozing.

The Swiss Confederation will put no further obstacles in their way. Which causes discussions in the neighboring country. “Swiss wave migrants to Germany,” the newspapers headlined. There is hardly a talk show in which Federal Republican politicians or police union members do not demand stricter border controls.

Federal Councilor Karin Keller-Sutter replies that Switzerland adheres to the Dublin Agreement. And that only applies if someone applies for asylum, which does not happen in Buchs. Therefore, there is no legal basis for detaining people.

The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) responded to a request from SonntagsBlick that there was no official criticism, either from Germany or France.

SBB has its own train compartment for “foreign groups”

So if you have a ticket, you can continue your journey. Such as Thamer (34), a bartender from Tunisia who speaks German and French, but has not met foreign tourists for a long time. “No baksheesh”, he explains, “that’s why we Tunisians go to France, there is just undeclared work.”

The Afghans in the group, on the other hand, are drawn to Germany from Buchs. They want to apply for asylum there. Nobody comes up with the idea of ​​staying in Switzerland. Thamer explains with a laugh that he will never find work here because he “lost” his passport on his way to Serbia. In Austria there is hardly any undeclared work.

And so the group trotted past waiting commuters who barely dared to look—ashamed of the contrasts? – and, at the direction of the railway staff, climbed into the rear carriage of the Interregio towards Zurich, which is reserved for “foreign groups”.

“The state railways even provide trains”, the German “Bild” responded. The SBB drily noted: “Many travel with group tickets, and they entitle you to a reservation anyway.”

All roads lead to Paris

Hours later at Basel train station, the other hot spot in the current asylum situation: French border guards wait for the regional trains to Mulhouse and Strasbourg. Bad luck for Idris and Mohammed Selim, who are not allowed to enter France without a passport.

The two Afghans don’t take it too tragically. They’ve been through too much already. One of their brothers was killed by the Taliban, they say, and they scooped water from their dinghy back into the Mediterranean with their bare hands. And now they are looking for a taxi in the center of Basel that will take them across the border. “We’re definitely going to make it,” they say. You believe them.

The fastest way to Paris would be the TGV, Mohammed (26) and Ousséma (28) know that of course. But despite the ticket, she is not allowed on the express train in Basel.

It is day five of their odyssey, the two Tunisians paid 5,000 euros each. They came to Serbia without a visa. There they deposited their passports with a “friend” so that the Hungarians would not later deport them to their homeland. At the EU’s external border between Serbia and Hungary, where smugglers took them, they nearly froze to death after three days. In the EU we went here by train.

Now they are almost there: “France.” Ousséma has a sister there, and like many others, they hope to get a job there repairing mobile phones. Unannounced and black of course. Instead of the TGV, they now take the tram to St-Louis, which is just across the border. All roads lead to Paris.

Gare de St-Louis: Ousséma’s fingers tremble as he pretends to be on his phone. He even came to ‘France’ by tram. But now four gendarmes in full swing are watching him.

Eight hours have passed since he arrived in Buchs, and his slow train leaves for Strasbourg in a few minutes. If checked now, he can still be sent back to Switzerland.

But then the regional train finally arrives. An old friend from Buchs is already on the platform: bartender Thamer. And he still hasn’t forgotten how to smile. Like hundreds of others, they passed through Switzerland that day.