It took Mohamad Simo eight months, $15,000 and five forged passports to get from war-torn Aleppo, Syria, to the sleepy town of Vetlanda in the Swedish countryside.

Now the software engineer has refugee status and access to one of Europe’s most generous welfare systems. He lives in comfortable state housing, studies Swedish on the government’s tab and dreams of opening a chain of coffee shops.

More than a thousand miles to the south, Fares Ayyub is spending his nights with other refugees in a bus station in Sofia, Bulgaria. He, too, was trying to reach Northern Europe. But the civil engineer says he was swindled by smugglers in Turkey, then arrested by Bulgarian police and deposited for months in a detention center in a border town. He is stuck in the European Union’s poorest country, unable to work legally.

As the number of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war tops two million, the humanitarian crisis is spilling into Europe. Tens of thousands of middle-class Syrians with enough money to pay for transportation and smugglers are trying to get to the continent’s wealthy northern states, lured by lenient refugee policies and the prospect of favorable living conditions.

Mohamad Simo paid smugglers $15,000, used five false passports and spent days in a Greek prison to reach Sweden, where he found refuge away from his home in war-torn Aleppo in Syria.

Whether they wind up in Nordic comfort or desperate straits on the fringes of Southern Europe is often a matter of luck. The refugee trail is rife with dangers, from border guards to crooked smugglers to corrupt policeman to anti-immigration vigilantes, according to refugees and rights groups. Many Syrians have died making treacherous boat crossings of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.

“Sometimes, I wake up and I can’t believe I’m here,” Mr. Simo said recently while preparing traditional Syrian spiced chicken in his Vetlanda kitchen. “I have to pinch myself. For me, Sweden is paradise.”

In an interview last month, before he slipped away from the crowded border detention facility and went to Bulgaria’s capital, Mr. Ayyub was dejected. “Europe was a dream for me, but also a gamble,” he said. “If you win, you get to the north and life is good. If you lose, you end up in here and it’s another kind of hell.”

There are strong incentives for Syrians to try to reach Northern Europe. Sweden is granting immediate asylum and residence permits to all Syrians arriving at their borders. Norway has pledged to take 1,000 refugees and is offering asylum on a case-by-case basis. Germany has promised to issue 5,000 temporary-residency permits.

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Mohamad Simo, left, and Fares Ayyub. Jonathan Saruk and Jodi Hilton for The Wall Street Journal