During the coldest time of the year, Aarhus Winter Hostel provides night shelter for homeless foreginers. The homeless mainly come from Poland and Romania, and without the yellow danish health insurance card they are not welcome in the city's other hostels.
The foreign homeless have in common that their stories start in the same place: with a dream. A dream of a job in Denmark and a better life. The stories also have in common that the dreams are shattered.
In this story we meet the men who come to the hostel seeking shelter every night.
Pinocchio's entire palm is covered in calluses. The nails bulge out as if something is pressing under them. He spends his days collecting mortgages. But it hasn't always been that way. When he came to Denmark, he worked for a Danish supermarket chain and had his own apartment in Brabrand. It had three rooms. Now he is here, sharing one room with three others. Pinocchio is 46 years old and comes from Romania, but he has been in Denmark for three years and nine months.
Pinocchio's son lives and works in Ireland. He earns good money there. Pinocchio tells proudly when asked. Once his son visited him at regular intervals in Denmark, but that time is over. How can your son come and visit when you live on the street?
From November to March, the empty beds of the winter hostel await a cold friend from the street. The doors open at 20.30 and again at 8 the morning after, when the homeless must go back to the street. The hostel has twenty-two beds distributed in five rooms. One room is reserved for women and one room is reserved for the snores.
Barely half an hour after the doors have opened, the soup pot is empty. There are still jugs of coffee and tea. The electric kettle in the kitchen buzzes all evening to deliver hot drinks to the cold bodies.
In the weekend, the temperature drops to minus 14 degrees at night.
It is the second time in two weeks that some of the homeless suddenly leaves the hostel. Shortly before Christmas, one of the homeless took an overdose in the toilet. Friday night, one of the homeless men went into cardiac arrest.
Most of the foreign homeless haven't seen their families in years, and most of them have the names of their children tattooed somewhere on their body. Eric has the name of his daughter, Olivia, tattooed on his left arm.
In the evening they come in as a group, in the morning they leave individually with everything they own in their bagpack or a bag from the supermarket. Every man for himself.
A new winter day awaits out there for Pinocchio and the other homeless people.
The hard-skinned hands must once again go out and raise money, and the sick body's abstinence must again be soothed.