WEST BERLIN -- Looking out at crumpled facades from the window of his small West Berlin hotel room, Wilfried Sablowski thanked God he found work after only one week as a refugee.

The truck driver, his wife Brigit and their one-year-old daughter are among thousands who have come west from East Germany in search of a better life.

The Sablowskis and more than 10 other East German families found the hotel a temporary home where they share meals and search for work with the support of their new government's welfare system.

Throughout the week before Christmas, small East German children ran and screeched up and down the old building's bleached stairways. Their parents shared stories about their struggle to find employment in a country where jobs are not provided by the state as in East Germany.

Since their run for the border, members of the Sablowski family have had little time to ponder the historic changes in their country.

"We think first about our family and then about politics," the father said.

Manuela Freude and Carola Pflug passed the time in their hotel room talking while their children played on the floor and ran in and out of the room. Freude, a former chambermaid from Prenzlowerberg, East Germany, came to West Berlin with her husband Fred and three young boys in early November.

The couple, both unemployed and supported by welfare, said while they value the freedoms of democracy, they have learned fundamental differences between the socialist and capitalist system the hard way.

Both have been unable to find jobs and an affordable apartment, Manuella Freude said. Furthermore, the cost of day-care in West Berlin is more than three times that in East Germany, they said.

Freude said her family will probably stay at the hotel until late February or March.

Andre Rickert and his wife Jacquline said they could not make enough money to support their family in East Germany and came west to "find a new start."

"With the economic problems, life was too hard," Andre Rickert said. "We could not do what we want. But it's better here."

Rickert, who worked in a coal factory in East Germany, said he had not found a job yet but hoped to make more money as a builder in the West.