Wilting in the heat, surrounded by piles of rubbish and smothered in the thick stink of a portable toilet, there was one thing that gave hope to the thousand-odd refugees stranded on Friday at the first rail station inside Croatia. The prospect, however fleeting, of a train.

Every hour or so, somebody somewhere would whisper “qitar”, the Arabic word for train. Within a few seconds, a cascade of humans would tumble from the shade of the nearby trees, into the 40-degree heat, and towards the station’s single platform. Always they were taunted by the pair of empty tracks gleaming in the blinding sunlight.

“Rumours,” sighed Salem Baddour, a 26-year-old Syrian economics graduate, on more than one occasion. “Always rumours.”

Since Hungary blocked its borders on Tuesday, it is this tiny rail station at Tovarnik, a town located a kilometre inside Croatia, that has become the latest crucible of the European refugee crisis.

Initially, Croatia welcomed refugees here, promising to carry them from the station’s single platform all the way to Slovenia, the gateway to northern Europe. But as the exodus then swerved westwards it turned out Croatia could not cope with such a sudden influx of refugees. Many people were left stranded in Tovarnik.

At about 12:30am on Friday, a train did arrive but the thousand people who climbed on board had to wait more than eight hours for it to leave. Those waiting at the station half a day later had the opposite problem. Instead of the train that never left, theirs was the train that never came.

For Baddour’s group of mostly twenty-somethings, it was a kind of purgatory, a limbo between their hellish life in Syria and a better future they hoped for in Europe.

Nada Daoud, her daughter, Zahraa, and Mohamed el-Haiba, at Tovarnik station. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley/The Guardian

“Imagine what I’m thinking,” said Zahraa Daoud, a 23-year-old literature student travelling with her mother, Nada. “Imagine if all of your country was exploding and the chance of a future was over there [down the track] but instead we’re stuck here.”

Her friend Mohamed el-Haiba, 23, a bio-medical engineer, who joined the group after they reached Greece and was sitting on the ground near the station, said: “We’re stuck here and no one knows why we should be in this situation. We want to live. But not like this, with rubbish everywhere.”

Haiba said he knew that some Europeans were afraid of Muslims and their perceived conservatism, but this was no way to treat them. “We’re still humans. I was reading the comments on the Guardian’s Facebook page and it was so disappointing. You can see many girls here without the hijab, just hanging out with guys. We’re just normal people in Syria who have had to flee.”

There was another shimmer in the crowd, prompting everyone to dash again to the still empty train tracks. “Rumours,” Baddour sighed once more, as he returned from the platform. “Always rumours.”

But nothing can ultimately keep this group down: not when they’ve come from problems far worse and not when they have such high hopes for the future.

Daoud’s mother, Nada, said she wanted to finish a media studies degree, if and when she reached Germany; after that she would return to her former career as a teacher.

Daoud said she wanted to complete her literature degree, but the war had put paid to most university education in Syria. Most of all, she said, she dreamt “of feeling safe and happy”. That was something impossible back in Damascus. She would leave home every morning fearing it was the last time she would see her mother “because you might be killed by a bomb or taken [by militia]”.

Little could make Haiba regret leaving either, and certainly not a day-long wait in the heat. “Syrians think they are dying in Syria,” he said. “So whether they die there or on the way to Europe, it’s the same thing.”

Refugees at Tovarnik station, Croatia, wait through the night for trains going west. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley/The Guardian

Haiba said he was jailed following Syria’s failed revolution in 2011 and still had neck and back problems after being tortured for 17 days. His home was shelled twice. Two of his closest friends were killed, others fled the country. “So in my mind, I just know one thing. I just want to survive.”

That said, he did have a more specific reason for wanting to plough on. He said he was gay, and if he got to Germany it would be the first time in his life he would be able to behaveas if that were normal. “In Syria, I can’t be who I am. I had to be careful when I was hanging out with my boyfriend. But he arrived in Germany a month ago and he’s waiting for me there.” Meanwhile, there was the wait for the train.