KIRCHBERG — Authorities are appealing for calm after a passenger on a crowded but silent Luxembourg-ville bus aggressively tried to converse with a stranger.
The incident occurred around 8:30 a.m. on Monday when the suspect, an accountant who only recently moved to the Grand Duchy, was travelling on bus number 16 to his office in Kirchberg. Without warning, he remarked to a fellow passenger that it would be nice when the tram work was complete.
The shockwave of the verbal explosion in the silent bus sent many passengers pushing to the back of the 18-meter vehicle. Of the estimated 200 people on board at the time, dozens were struck by acute social discomfort, according to reports.
“It was horrible,” said one witness, a junior lawyer who asked not to be named. “As usual, I was in my seat, enjoying the total silence of Luxembourg public transport when I was violently jarred out of my daydreams by this psychopath.”
“The woman he was talking to didn’t even acknowledge him, so he repeated himself, but louder so everyone on the bus could hear,” he continued. “I thought I was going to die.”
As many as 30 passengers were transported to the CHL to be treated for various types of social trauma. Authorities say the number of injured could have been higher if not for the earbuds that many passengers were wearing.
HR officer Aurélie Lambert, 27, who was the target of the attempt to converse, told the Wurst that she had never felt so socially violated in her life.
“I did not know this man standing next to me, this smiley buffoon in an ill-fitting suit, and yet he tried to forcefully enter my bubble that keeps me safe from unwanted interactions and meaningless chitchat with ridiculous persons,” she said. “You expect this sort of thing to happen in America, or during a full moon in a rural Scottish pub full of intoxicated turnip farmers, but not here in a cool, modern European capital like Luxembourg-ville.”