AWhen Milan discovers the blood stain on his sleeve, it’s over. “Anja, Anja!” he calls, wants to jump up, points to the red splash on the cream-colored leather. “I just bought it yesterday!” He almost shouts the words. Anja Wienand, head of the Frankfurt train station mission and a trained paramedic, continues to press a gauze pad onto the gaping cut in Milan’s hand. “The jacket isn’t the problem,” she says, with a short pause behind each word. “We’ll clean it right away.”
It’s a Friday lunchtime in the station mission. Milan, a regular guest who, like all the homeless people in this text, has a different name, has injured himself. How exactly we can’t say because he’s completely drunk. But it’s not that important for the train station mission. Your mission is: to help. Just as it is needed at that moment. And Milan needs a bandage.
“Many people would be overwhelmed by that”
The calmness with which Wienand treats her guests is a prerequisite for employment at the contact point in the main station run by Diakonie and Caritas. The job cannot be done any other way. “You have to de-escalate a situation in the room and call an ambulance at the same time, then you unclog the toilet and have a highly complex administrative process running on the PC about a ticket – and then someone needs spiritual care. Many would be overwhelmed by that,” says Leif Murawski.
The doctor of linguistics and literature has been working at the Bahnhofsmission on the “front of love,” as he calls it, for almost 33 years. He started straight after his studies and never wanted to change careers after that, because there is no social institution as diverse as the counter, the coffee bar, the clothing room and the shower at the train station mission. The fact that, as a Slavic student, he also speaks Polish and Russian helps him with many guests.
The Bahnhofsmission’s clients include not only homeless people who want to warm up and travelers who need help changing trains or who have missed a train. Since Russia attacked Ukraine, refugees have been arriving at Frankfurt Central Station every day. The employees issue tickets for them to Giessen, to the initial reception center of the state of Hesse. 50 to 100 Ukrainian refugees still seek help from Anja Wienand’s team every day. In addition, there are around 280 travelers, homeless people and other people seeking help every day. The eight full-time employees can hardly manage it. That should change with the help of the readers of the FAZ: This year, the “FAZ readers help” fundraising campaign is collecting money for the Bahnhofsmission, which will use it to create additional jobs.
At half past seven the peace and quiet is over
A large Ukrainian family also arrived on Friday night from the Eastern Cape. The mother of nine children says she slept on the street for two days. When René Kamper takes over the shift at seven in the morning, the family sleeps in the so-called “children’s lounge”, a room with a lounger, a sofa and four sleeping mats. The night shift provides some more information and Kamper puts on coffee. It’s still quiet.
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