Filming in Milan's central station a few months ago I met Alaa el-Din and Muhammad who were working out where to spend the rest of their lives.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT, SYRIAN REFUGEE: We are from Syria. We're going to London.

REPORTER: Where do you want to go?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL, SYRIAN REFUGEE: Any country I can be like a human, like, finally be a human, be myself.

REPORTER: Did you come together?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: We come together, yes.

REPORTER: On the same boat?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yes, same boat.

They'd fled their war-torn homeland to avoid being forced to fight for the regime.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: So I have to run away because I don't want to fight. I don't have any choice - fight or run away.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yeah, that's it.

When they left Milan, they were desperate to get to England.

REPORTER: Good luck.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Thank you, Amos. Bye. Bye-bye.

But I later learned their dream ended in Calais in a tent city called 'The Jungle'. Back in Australia I imagined them amongst the desperate people I saw on the news.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT (Translation): We saw these things far too often so it was extremely difficult. For example, a woman had her toes severed by the train… Her toes were gone, it was awful.

First Muhammad gave up - then Alaa el-Din. Unable to face more horror, they each headed towards Germany. Alaa el-Din received some advice from a sympathetic train conductor.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT (Translation): He said “Why are you sad, why are there tears in your eyes?” I told him and he said, “Go, to Hamburg, it’s good. They receive people there, the situation is good and they are very good in Germany.” So I came to Hamburg.

When you're a refugee chance encounters can lead to new beginnings. What challenges will they face next?

REPORTER: Ah, it's him.

I came to Germany to find out.

REPORTER: How are you?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Good, good fine. How are you?

REPORTER: I'm good. Shall we go for a walk?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yes.

Like most train stations in German cities the Hauptbahnhof in Hamburg is heaving with refugees. 500 arrive every day and these volunteers are here to help them. Some are just passing through on their way to Scandinavia.

VOLUNTEER: Another train, then you go to Norway.

Many others, like Alaa el-Din, are happy to stay put.

REPORTER: What was your first impression of Hamburg?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: I feel comfortable. I see people, a lot of people, refugee there. I spoke to them. They say Hamburg is very good. It’s okay, I feel good.

While his asylum claim is processed, Alaa el-Din is living in one or the many camps springing up across the city to house thousands of new arrivals. His camp's run by the Red Cross and we weren't supposed to film inside.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: This is my camp - New Land Camp.

But Alaa el-Din used a mobile phone to show us what it looks like.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: And we have two container, up, down.

He's lucky to live in a shipping container. Germany's resources are over-stretched and many new arrivals are being housed in tents.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: This room number 7. Welcome to my room. This is my room. This my bed. This a friend of my, Abu Fahdi.

He is allowed visitors, so I smuggled in a camera to film the small room he shares with three other Syrians.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: This where I have stuff, I put it like this, I turned over like this to put a lot of stuff for us.

Alaa el-Din used to own a small factory making fashion accessories and Abu Fahdi is a tailor. They lived very comfortably in Syria.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: We are very sorry about the mess because we are - it's the first time in my life I been like this and he as well. That's all.

But Alaa el-Din doesn't spend much time here during the day. Of all the sights in Hamburg, Café Refugio is the number one attraction for asylum seekers. It's a place where strangers from all over the world quickly feel at home.

BOY: What music do you like?

Staffed entirely by volunteers, Cafe Refugio provides sustenance and solidarity. There's a human touch here that's missing from the refugee camps. But this is what draws most people here - free German lessons. Learning German is the first step to integration but until you're granted asylum, which takes months, the government doesn't provide lessons.

TEACHER (Translation): What is your name?

AHMED: Ahmed.

TEACHER (Translation): What’s your name?

AHMED (Translation): My name is Ahmed.

TEACHER (Translation): Where do you live?

AHMED (Translation): I live in Schwarzenberg.

The big challenge for Aala el-Din's classmates today is learning to pronounce the name of their camp.

REFUGEE: Schwar...zen...berg. They have a lot of letter inside the word.

REPORTER: Schwarzenberg - this is difficult?

Some of Alaa el-Din's classmates are Kurdish, they have a saying about what happens when you learn a new language.

REFUGEE: In Kurdish - Yeksuman yekinsak. In Arabic, Luha wahad.

REFUGEE 2: When you learn another language, we start new life.

REPORTER: So when you learn to speak German you learn to become German, you become a German person?

REFUGEE 2: Yes.

REFUGEE: That's what I want to say, exactly meaning.

TEACHER: Okay, the first lesson.

REFUGEE: Thank you very much.

Refugees in the east of Germany have a very different experience to those in west. Unfortunately for Muhammad and his brother Aamer there are no German lessons in Hoyerswerda, a small town in Saxony.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Spremburger Strasse. It's not like in English.

Like many mart parts of the former East Germany unemployment is high here. Once you claim asylum you don't get to choose where you live and a town like this comes as a culture shock.

REPORTER: So where else can you take me?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: This is all the city. You saw it all.

They have to stay put until their claims are processed, so for the time being Hoyerswerda is home.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Okay, this is my room, the room they give it to us. We are here, six beds, six persons they are living here. I am happy because of my friends, just all, because we are staying together.

His Syrian friends are everything because there's no opportunity to make German ones.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Sometime when I'm in supermarket or I'm walking in the street people look at me in bad way and say bad words in German. Even I don't understand what this mean, but I know it's not good. Some of them make a move with their hands or some like go from here...

REPORTER: Like a rude gesture?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Yeah.

Hoyerswerda became notorious for its treatment of foreigners 25 years ago. In 1991, shortly after re-unification, neo-Nazis attacked a hostel for migrant workers. The government quickly rehoused them elsewhere and locals celebrated their victory. Now asylum seekers arriving in other parts of Saxony have also been greeted with xenophobic violence. In the past year attacks on refugee housing throughout Germany have quadrupled but this time the government stood its ground.

ANGELA MERKEL, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY (Translation): What we had to experience here is shameful and repulsive. Together we will make every effort to make it clear that Germany will help where help is sought.

The government knows that this help provides a rallying cry for the far right.

JENS BAUR, NPD LEADER SAXONY (Translation): No one is being sent back. No one is being sent home. What’s happening here is ridicule for all Germans and nothing else, dear friends.

Supporters of the far right NPD Party are blamed for much of the anti-refugee violence.

JENS BAUR (Translation): This is the madness that’s going on here in Europe.

And guess which country their leader in Saxony thinks Germany should be looking to for its refugee policy...

JENS BAUR (Translation): Meanwhile in Australia they are tougher with the "No Way" campaign. They send them back home and that is the only correct way, not the way our government is doing it.

Refugees like Muhammad are caught in the middle of this high-stakes political debate. No-one even told him about Hoyerswerda's dark past until after he arrived.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: I have friend they told me this. They told me to take care, to be careful. Of course I didn't feel good.

Safe in Hamburg, Alaa el-Din's preoccupied with thoughts of his wife and children still in Syria.

ALAA EL-DIN (Translation): I always fear for them, there are always explosions and bad things happening there.

He has a five-year-old son and a five-month-old daughter he has never met.

REPORTER: Why didn't you bring your family over with you?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Because I'm afraid going by ship, maybe the ships, all the ships they broken in the sea, maybe they will die. I don't want him to be die.

REPORTER: Do you have photos of your family you can show me?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yeah, she's my daughter, she's my daughter.

He longs for the day he'll be reunited with his family.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: And here's my son and my daughter together.

But he knows it could be eight or nine months until his own asylum is granted.

ALAA EL-DIN (Translation): I miss them so much and I want them with me. I want them to be all with me always. But what can we do – this is what life gave us.

Luckily Alaa el-din has something to take his mind off his troubles. He recently started working long hours at a Syrian restaurant. He's grateful to have found any kind of job so quickly. It means he can support his family and plan for their future.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Before I was happy in Syria. I'm self-employed before. I have small factory for accessories and now I lost everything. I came to Europe to work like, as a chef now.

REPORTER: Is it difficult to go from that to being a refugee, to working in a restaurant?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yes, too difficult for me. All the time I'm thinking about it, I was rich man, you know.

REPORTER: A rich man?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yeah, I was a rich man. Now I am a pooring man - poor man.

Cooking is also a lifeline for Muhammad and his roommates in Hoyerswerda...

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL (Translation): I’ll ask my mother how to make molokhia.

...giving them emotional rather than financial support.

MOTHER (Translation): Stir it for around 15 minutes you know, on a low heat.

A bachelor and a ship's engineer by trade, he's had to call his mother in Syria to get the recipe for one of his favourite dishes.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL (Translation): We have everything, we started it and it is on the stove now.

MOTHER (Translation): Okay, on a low heat?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: All the time any food I want. It came in my mind and I want to eat it, I am calling her and she's telling me what I have to do. We are cooking like this every day. We are trying to make ourselves feel that we are still in our country eating our food.

REPORTER: Do you think you'll be able to get your old life back?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Of course not, of course not. That will not happen.

Over dinner they watch stories of the refugees still on their way...

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL (Translation): Is he leaving with anyone from the village?

...and help plan the journey of others yet to leave.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL (Translation): Does he have WhatsApp? So he has WhatsApp?

Alaa el-Din has invited me to have tea with his roommate, Abu Fahdi, who's extremely worried about his family.

ABU FAHDI (Translation): This is my wife, this is my daughter Loulou.

His wife and kids are still in Syria caught in the middle of the fighting and he feels powerless to protect them.

ABU FAHDI (Translation): This is Yazan, when he hears an explosion he hides under the bed, every day before I fall asleep, I cry for an hour. Sorry.

REPORTER: No. Don't be sorry.

ABU FAHDI (Translation): It is a very difficult situation… leaving your family behind to take a holiday is different to leaving them in danger in a war-torn country. I left them so that I could try to save them, there was no other way to save them except to come here.

Getting to Germany has brought hope, not relief.

ABU FAHDI (Translation): When Alaa is asleep, he talks a lot about his family, he talks about his son a lot, he loves his son so much, so much. He tells his wife “Take care of him, look after him, do your best for him, feed him, take him to the park, enrol him in school.” He always talks of his family in his sleep.

Torn between Syria and Germany Alaa el-Din and his friends aren't fully present in either. Muhammad's heading out of Hoyerswerda visiting his only German friend who lives in Chemnitz a few hours away.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: How are you?

MICHAEL ALLMAIER: I’m fine.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Nice to see you. Do you have garlic?

MICHAEL ALLMAIER: Yeah, yeah, sure we have it.

Michael met Muhammad at a protest camp held by refugees frustrated at how long it was taking to process their asylum claims.

MICHAEL ALLMAIER: I offer for them to shower here in the house and to cook, because when I would be in their situation I would be happy to meet some people who helps me.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: It means to me so much because I was here, no-one at all and I didn't know any German. Whatever he can do, he wants to help anyone.

MAN: Thank you for this meal. What is this? This is cheese?

Michael says that because of his support for refugees local Nazis have offered a reward to anyone willing to rough him up.

MICHAEL ALLMAIER: If I'm going alone by night it could be I have five, six persons from the Nazis in front of me and they will beat me because they are getting the money.

His advice to Muhammad…

MICHAEL ALLMAIER: I say go to West Germany because you will not have a good time in East Germany because you're not welcome in East Germany. The people here are afraid of you. They don't want to have you. They don't want to have your family or your children in their kindergarten.

SPEAKER (Translation): My friends are you fed up to the back teeth of the millions that invade our beautiful country?

Every week thousands of people in nearby Dresden are rallying to stop them from coming.

SPEAKER (Translation): And they'll build mosques non-stop! Are you ready to for the Islamisation?

CROWD: No!!

But Muhammad says no-one should be afraid of him, he just wants a safe place to wait out the war.

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: My country - if it stop, if everything's OK, I will go back. It's my home.

REPORTER: You'd rather live in Syria than Germany?

MUHAMMAD ISMAIL: Of course, than any place in the world.

A couple of weeks after I started filming this story Alaa el-Din told me he had some news.

REPORTER: Hello, what's this? What?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: This is my paper, this is my paper.

REPORTER: What papers?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: I have to stay here. It's allowed me to stay here. I'm very very happy, praise be to God. And I apply for my child, for my wife, this paper for her, this for my wife.

REPORTER: This is definite now - your family can come here?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT: Yeah. They are very happy as well.

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT (Translation): I can’t believe I got residency, every day I wake up, I look at the documents and I see the residency and I … I feel that I have a new life. I can’t tell you… I can’t express what I feel. When they come here, I don’t know… I might go crazy with happiness. Maybe I won’t believe that I am really alive again and I am seeing my wife and children.

Alaa el-Din hopes to be reunited with his family in as little as four or five months.

REPORTER: If I come back and visit you in Hamburg in five years 'time, what will I find?

ALAA EL-DIN AL-FARHAT (Translation): You will meet Alaa, you will meet the real Alaa el-din. Alaa el-Din who is always happy, who always laughs, always jokes, always dances. You’ll see a different person to the one you see now. You’ll see a very different person.