This Chinese Tourist Accidentally Applied for Asylum in Germany, Then Stayed in a Refugee Hostel.

A 31-year-old Chinese tourist on vacation in Germany probably thought it was strange that when he tried to tell authorities about his wallet being stolen in the southwestern city of Heidelberg, they took away his passport, registered his fingerprints, gave him a medical exam, and then sent him to a migrant hostel in the city of Dulmen.

But without English or German, the man identified only as “Mr. L” was so thoroughly lost in translation that for nearly two weeks he stayed put in the building where German authorities housed refugees while they applied for asylum. It was there that he ate his daily meals and collected a stipend, while trying to explain to staff members that he had plans to keep traveling to Italy.

It turned out that Mr. L’s first mistake was misidentifying a town hall for a police station, where instead of signing a document about the theft, he signed an asylum application. From there,  clearly not understanding where he was going, authorities put him on a bus that took him some 220 miles to Dulmen.

Christoph Schlütermann, a Red Cross worker who encountered the backpacker at the hostel, said the man seemed much more helpless than the other residents there to seek asylum. Fearing that he was not being understood, Schlütermann enlisted the help of workers at a local Chinese restaurant, who recommended he try using a translation app to figure out what the man was trying to say.

“I spoke into the app in German and the phone translated it into Mandarin. But when I received his reply, I got the curious response ‘I want to go walking in Italy’,” Schlütermann told German newspaper Dülmener Zeitung.

Schlütermann was also surprised that Mr. L kept asking for his passport back, when most refugees happily turn in their passports in hopes of being recognized for asylum. Eventually, with the help of a translator from the restaurant, the tourist was able to explain the mishap that landed him in the refugee center alongside asylum-seekers who had fled war zones to seek protection in Germany.

It remains unclear why authorities jumped to the conclusion that he was seeking asylum, or willingly sent him to a center for asylum-seekers without properly verifying that was what he wanted to do. In an interview with German media on Monday, Schlütermann blamed the mishap on increased bureaucracy during the country’s refugee crisis, which saw more than 1 million asylum-seekers arrive in Germany in 2015. 

“It was an extraordinary moment for us all. He said Europe was not what he had expected,” Schlütermann said. “What would you expect if you had come to Europe as a tourist and spent 12 days sleeping on a camping bed in a refugee centre?”

Photo credit: Lukas Barth/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images