Camilla tours Berlin refugee centre while King Charles meets Ukrainians

Royal couple make separate stops on second day of state visit

Queen Consort Camilla met a baby during a stop at the Refugio Cafe in Berlin. AFP
Powered by automated translation

Britain's royal couple turned their attention to refugees on Thursday, the second day of their state visit to Germany.

King Charles III played table football with Ukrainians at a disused Berlin airport.

Queen Consort Camilla, meanwhile, toured a community centre in one of Berlin's most diverse neighbourhoods.

The stops came after the king received a standing ovation for addressing parliament in German.

In her first separate engagement of the trip, the queen consort visited the Refugio Cafe with Elke Buedenbender, the wife of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The centre offers accommodation and social events for refugees, including Arabic speakers and recent arrivals from Ukraine. It opened in 2015, in a summer when more than a million refugees arrived in Germany.

The queen consort met a baby called Kuno as she was shown one of Refugio's projects, a bike repair workshop for women.

On a subsequent stop, she and Ms Buedenbender met performers from Berlin's Comic Opera.

King Charles was meeting Ukrainians at the former Tegel Airport, one of many stops with a British connection, having been built in 1948 during the UK, US and French airlift to West Berlin.

The king told refugees he was praying for them, after using his speech to MPs to speak of "unimaginable suffering" since Russia invaded.

In a lighter moment at the airport with Mr Steinmeier, he played table football in the centre's games room and said he remembered "trying this when I was younger".

After conceding a goal he said: "You are the experts.”

Germany has registered more than a million people as refugees from Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February last year.

Day two of King Charles III's visit to Germany - in pictures

Updated: March 30, 2023, 3:43 PM