[LINK] "Fashion Collides With Syrian War in Milan Central Station"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Mario Bertacche describes the plight and the stories of Syrian refugees in Italy, looking at an ersatz community in a Milan train station.

On the mezzanine of Milan’s main railway station, a Syrian family of six sits among hundreds of refugees as Claudia Schiffer, dressed as a medieval princess, smiles at them from a Dolce & Gabbana poster.

“For the moment, we’re stuck here,” Ahmed, 42, a house decorator from Daraa in southern Syria, said as volunteers handed out sandwiches with chocolate spread. “We don’t know what do to. We are worn out.”

The grandiose terminus, replete with bas relief sculptures depicting Roman history and signs of the zodiac, has turned Italy’s fashion and business capital into an unlikely crossroads for thousands of people fleeing the Syrian civil war. Between platforms handling at least 600 trains a day and the polished white marble concourse, two worlds collide.

Ahmed, worried about being identified by his full name because of his illegal status, and his family are among the 28,000 Syrians who ended up in the station, Milano Centrale, over the past 12 months.

Rescued by the Italian navy after traffickers abandoned them in crammed dinghies in the Mediterranean Sea, they find themselves stranded en route to other countries as they struggle to navigate European Union asylum rules.