On a recent raw morning in Berlin, Said Sabagh and two friends huddled with hundreds of others on a muddy expanse of ground, trying to keep warm. A cold rain was falling and the three Syrians had gratefully accepted flimsy plastic ponchos distributed by volunteers. Then they did what they have done each day for the past month: wait.
To register his asylum claim, Mr. Sabagh first had to wait eight days to receive a number. He slept on the pavement to secure a spot in the line. Once he received his number, he began the wait to see when it would be called. All day, every day, for the last three weeks, he has gazed at a small screen mounted on a pole hoping to see the digits that hold the key to his future.
"Germany is very, very good," said the 33-year-old, who left his wife and four-month-old daughter back in Aleppo. He looked at the grey government building in front of him and shook his head. "But here there is a very big problem."
Mr. Sabagh was waiting at what has become a notorious bottleneck in Germany's asylum process located in the Berlin neighbourhood of Moabit. It's a potent symbol of the practical problems local governments across the country are facing as they struggle to handle an influx of refugees and migrants they were not equipped to process.
In August, the German government raised its estimate for the number of asylum seekers it expected this year to 800,000 and politicians now say the figure could hit one million. Earlier this week, a tabloid claimed a secret official document put the true number at 1.5 million and warned of a breakdown in the systems providing services to refugees; the government denied such a document existed.
In many cases, local authorities and volunteers have made heroic efforts to receive the new arrivals. But the challenges are mounting. With winter approaching, cities that have relied on ad hoc solutions to accommodate refugees – tennis centres, large tents – will need to find more durable housing. And police in several cities have been caught off-guard by clashes between groups of refugees at government-run centres.
Responding to rising public anxiety, Chancellor Angela Merkel has swung into action. She made a rare, hour-long appearance on a talk show on Wednesday night, reassuring voters – as she has before – that Germany can handle the challenge and that she had a plan for how to tackle it. Earlier the same day, she relieved Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere of primary responsibility for responding to the refugee crisis and put her own chief of staff in charge.
Some members of Ms. Merkel's own party don't share her confidence. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said this week the situation was "very nervous and fragile" and that Germany didn't have an unlimited capacity for asylum seekers. Last week, Mr. de Maiziere blamed some refugees for aggravating the situation by not following the rules that dictate where they are required to register.
On Friday, the conservative governor of Bavaria – who is allied with Ms. Merkel's party – threatened to challenge her refugee policies in Germany's constitutional court, saying his state was overwhelmed.
With more people arriving every day, the asylum process has slowed dramatically under the weight of the new applications. "The biggest problem we are facing right now is time," said Rebecca Kilian-Mason, who runs a service in Munich providing information to asylum seekers. The extended waiting periods will cause problems over the next several years, she predicted. "There will be people who can't integrate, who can't move forward" as they await a decision on their application.
The backlog in the process also means asylum seekers are spending longer in temporary reception centres. Such shelters, intended as stopgap measures, are often crowded, stressful places where there is a dearth of information about how long refugees will have to stay and what will happen next.
In recent weeks, fights broke out at refugee centres in Hamburg, Leipzig and Calden. In one clash in Hamburg on Tuesday, 60 people took part in a brawl that pitted Afghans against Albanians, according to a report from broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
"If you put 300 traumatized people from different cultures and backgrounds into one room, it's going to escalate," said Ms. Kilian-Mason. "It's not that people are not grateful, or that they're troublemakers – it's the circumstances you create for them."
Back in Moabit, Mr. Sabagh and his friends stood in the chilly air, looking up every minute or so to see whether their numbers had appeared on the screen. A dozen families with children sat under a canvas canopy. Nearby, a small poster sought information about a four-year-old named Mohammed from Serbia who went missing in the vicinity on Oct. 1 and speaks no German.
Mr. Sabagh, who sold car parts in Aleppo, was desperate to move his paperwork forward so he could start the process of bringing his wife and baby daughter to Germany. Several hours later, he turned out to be one of the lucky ones: His number, BT53, flashed in orange on the screen. His two friends were less fortunate. They applauded his luck, then resumed their wait.