Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

A Chinese tourist found himself living in a home for refugees in Germany for almost two weeks after he tried to report his stolen wallet and inadvertently filled in asylum application forms, a Red Cross official said.

The 31-year-old man from Beijing, known only as Mr. L, was robbed in Heidelberg in southwestern Germany, so he went to the city hall thinking it was a police station and signed the forms, German media and Reuters reported Monday.

He was taken to a Red Cross refugee center in the northwestern town of Duelmen, 220 miles away, where he was given food and money, the news agency said.

"He didn't speak any German or English — only Mandarin," Christoph Schluetermann, the head of the refugee center, told Reuters.

Germany's refugees struggle to fit in with everyone else

"He spent 12 days trapped in our bureaucratic jungle because we couldn't communicate. Germany is unfortunately an extremely bureaucratic country. Especially during the refugee crisis I've seen how much red tape we have," he said.

The man attracted the attention of staff at the center because he was well-dressed and kept trying to tell his story, but people could not understand him, Schluetermann added.

The employees tried using translation apps and eventually went to a local Chinese restaurant for help with interpretation, and discovered the truth.

"It was an extraordinary moment for us all. He said Europe was not what he had expected," Schluetermann told Reuters.

Schluetermann told the German news agency DPA that the man had to wait 12 days for his story to be put together and for the missing paperwork to be retrieved before he could continue his trip to France and Italy.

More than a million asylum-seekers arrived in Germany in 2015 from countries including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few have come from China over the years, Schluetermann told Reuters.