[Osem]

Lots of casually dressed, smiley very middle-class Germans - some with children, others with dogs, chatting animatedly in beautiful parkland on the outskirts of Hamburg on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

But this was indeed a protest group, putting together a petition in an attempt to stop a new refugee centre being built on the green.

People here were keen to emphasise that they were not anti-immigrant. Their main aim, they said, was to protect an area of natural beauty. But once we got talking, broader worries soon surfaced.

Birgit said finding a home was difficult enough for Germans. Hamburg has an acute housing shortage at the best of times. With the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants, the port city threatened to burst at the seams.

In desperation, the authorities have been turning shipping containers into refugee homes and repossessing empty commercial properties and open spaces to build new migrant centres.

"I don't think Angela Merkel has any idea what she started," Birgit concluded.

Hanno kept shaking his head when he said, "I just don't think Germany can integrate this number of people. It's a real worry. A real worry."

This was no demonstration of the minority anti-immigrant far right in Germany, so adept at grabbing headlines.

These were Angela Merkel's core voters: the comfortable middle classes. Now plagued by doubt and insecurity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34535983

German newspapers are full of reports about the benefits refugees receive compared to German citizens on welfare, leading, in some quarters, to a sense of injustice.

There's also a more widespread worry about strains on the national health and education systems.

"Germany can't take everyone in," Mr Caffier told me. "Up till now we had no choice. Angela Merkel didn't open the door to the refugees. They were already at the door.

I thought that only happened in xenophobic Britain...

Anyway the flow hasn't ceased, the deaths are still occurring and the problems are being widely felt yet the media seems to have lost interest in all of that and moved on to the much more serious problem of carrier bags...