A tenuous but potentially justifiable connection to our home country of New Zealand has been discovered in a major international news event, a finding that media organisations hope will make the story more salient to their viewers.
Three days ago, a passenger train on the outskirts of Berlin derailed while turning around a small bend, killing 35 passengers and injuring 183 more.
The story did not appear in New Zealand newspapers or on television due to the immense difficulty most people would have empathising with the victims.
But that may now change, as it emerges that the former husband of a New Zealand woman was the first to report the crash to emergency services, after witnessing it from a nearby road.
34-year-old Lukas Daecher, who was reportedly once married to a woman from New Zealand, said he noticed that the train was going “unusually fast” before it took the relatively slight turn along a bend in the track.
Some reports indicate that the woman was not, in fact, married to Mr. Daecher, but was actually his girlfriend.
Daecher said there was no fire as the train plunged down a hill and into a nearby paddock, but there was a “calamitous noise.”
He made no mention of his former New Zealand girlfriend, who friends say was not actually from New Zealand, but had simply been there once.
“It’ll stick with me forever,” said Daecher. “At first, I didn’t realise it was a passenger train, but I soon felt sick to my stomach as I watched startled people begin to walk up onto the track, bleeding, some of them crying.”
TVNZ Europe correspondent Jessica Mutch asked Mr. Daecher what he thought about New Zealand’s beautiful Southern Alps.
“I’m, I’m sorry what?” he replied. “I’ve just witnessed a terrible accident.”
Terrible accidents are a recurring problem in New Zealand, where this year’s road death toll was more than double that of the previous year.
Daecher had not seen Lord of the Rings.