The blonde, blue-eyed former German Foreign Office employee and TV presenter took a gamble 18 months ago.

"I was on parental leave in September and I had a lot more time than usual with my wife to watch talk shows," he says.

From the comfort of their couch, a newborn resting between them, Schreiber and his wife watched Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel open their country's borders.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived by train to makeshift camps and converted department stores as Germany struggled to accommodate those seeking shelter.

"What I noticed is that we discussed them but we didn't talk to them," he says when we meet a year later in the Berlin's bric-a-brac Zimt and Zummer cafe next to the German Bundestag.

Having spent part of his teenage years in Syria, Schrieber, who is fluent in Arabic, was in a unique position to talk straight to a refugee population battling to overcome their biggest hurdle, the German language.

"My wife said: 'You know the language, you should explain how our country works'."

Within weeks the 37-year-old had launched a TV show few believed would work, in a language few Germans speak, Marhaba, or "hello" in Arabic.

"We didn't have any expectations, a show about Germany and its customs in Arabic, on a German news website, where we have a German audience, with a German broadcaster," he says.

"We weren't sure if it would actually reach anyone."

Less than 24 hours later the show had raked in a million hits. "It was pretty good overnight," he quips, as he sneaks in a fork of his walnut and goats cheese salad.

"Apparently there was such a demand for information that we made it into a bilingual talk show. If we spoke in German we would put on Arabic subtitles and vice versa," he says.

"To do that as a private TV channel was very tough. It's not just a decision, it's a statement."

It wasn't good public relations they were looking for when the show first broadcast.

"But for my TV channel it was the best PR they had in ages, this is why they kept on doing it, let's be honest," he says.

Clean-cut and handsome, the TV presenter spent part of his youth catching trains between Aleppo and Damascus, areas that six years of conflict have turned into what Jens Laerke, the UN humanitarian spokesman, recently described as "a complete meltdown of humanity".

"When others went on exchange to Australia, I went to Syria," he says, as I move past halfway on my very German version of scorched scrambled eggs with salmon.

He says the overwhelming response to the program, which aired for the next year, made many people question why German private broadcaster NTV, was filling the role of government.

"If you make a political decision like that, to open up the country, you have to make sure you tell people about the rules and the framework," he says. "That is not our job.

"'Why is a journalist doing the job that the government should be doing'? people said."

Others were less philosophical.

"Apparently the blonde guy speaking Arabic triggered some reactions," he says.

"For those who don't like migrants, I was the worst case scenario. I got dozens of emails saying: 'You should be gassed with Angela Merkel'.

"Or 'be careful when you go home, I'll slit your throat you liberal arsehole'.

"Really nice stuff," he says.

While many emboldened by the rise of the far right in Germany let him know their views, Schreiber was also welcomed by refugees into their makeshift shipping container homes from Hamburg to Munich.

"You would go to a refugee camp in Bavaria [in southern Germany] and all of a sudden these refugees knew you," he says.

Not all were particularly receptive, believing the government had launched Marhaba as a conspiracy mechanism of forced assimilation.

"'First they talk to you in Arabic then they take away your veils'," remarked one local preacher.

He was also approached by Salafists, ultra-conservative fundamentalists associated with Islamic State, to join them on "religious workshops" in Saudi Arabia.

It's one of the reasons he's reluctant to talk much about his family or where he lives, he tells me, as he continues to skirt around the edges of his salad.

He often meets refugees, 1 million of whom have now taken up residence in Germany in emptied department stores, apartments and the redundant Tempelhof Airport to help them re-establish their lives.

"I went with a hairdresser from Raqqa in Syria. He wanted to work here and I took him to a barber shop," he says.

"He saw some punks on the street and he was shocked, he couldn't understand what group it was.

"'What do they want'?" the Syrian man asked him.

"These are the easy things to cover. When you talk about women's rights and sexuality that's more difficult to address," Schreiber says.

His time in Syria prepared him for uncomfortable conversations. He remains surprised that a place under such tight control could descend into six years of chaos.

"It was the time of Hafez al-Assad [father of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad]," he says. "I have very fond memories of that time, before the war it was a very civilised place, somewhere between the Arab world and Europe."

But even then, conversations with friends in train carriages would be self-censored.

"If I said the trains are good, one of my friends would say: 'Our trains are the best in the world, we are No.1 when it comes to trains'.

"Even those little things would be greeted with suspicion, we were just kids, but from the conversation it was like we can't talk in a bad way about the government."

Germany, he believes is at a turning point. Federal elections next year are being framed as the great test of the country's willingness to accept Merkel's refugee agenda.

"After the terror attacks in Munich or the New Year attacks in Cologne [where several women were raped and hundreds of others were reportedly assaulted – attacks also took place in other German cities], I really thought the far right would launch a campaign and that it would really become physical."

On the day we meet for lunch, Donald Trump has just been elected President of the United States.

"If you told me five years ago that Britain was going to leave the EU, Trump would become President of the United States, Putin would invade Ukraine, and we would accept a million refugees and the AfD [the German far-right] would rise, I would have said: 'No, it's not going to happen or the end is near'," he says.

"And now we live in a world where these are all facts."

But he won't be coming to Australia to seek safe haven anytime soon, he says.

"Historically it's been seen as very welcoming, most Germans would associate it with koala bears and kangaroos, but in the last few years we have also seen these horrifying pictures of people [refugees] on remote torture islands," he says.

"The perception is changing."

Eryk Bagshaw travelled to Germany as the 2016 recipient of the German Grant for Journalism.