Smile, We’re On The News! Xemxija’s Fish Feeding Frenzy Makes Headlines Worldwide
Fish flew out of Malta’s seas and straight to Xemxija’s streets last weekend in the midst of a record-breaking storm. People ran to pick them up, made fish steaks, and surprisingly, nobody has gotten sick yet.
And while the biblical scenes of flying fish took centre stage on the Xemxija shores, everyone else around the world looked on, gawking.
From Italy to Scandinavia and all the way across the world, footage of crazed Maltese people chasing fish around the still stormy streets was viewed and shared by the hundreds of thousands.
And for a sunny island that looks like a fish, it’s only fitting that we get that kind of traction.
Our European neighbour had a field day with its noisy next-door neighbours fish-craze
“Incredible rain of fish!” one Italian headline says. The Italians were told of the Maltese purge with colourful stories of people drag-racing to the Xemxija shores to get their load of the free fish. That day will go down in Maltese books as the day that anarchy reigned.
This Italian site literally described what happened in Xemxija in only a couple of words: “Help, it’s raining fish”.
We few Maltese from little Malta made it all the way around Europe
The video had its very own European tour. The French spoke about the pleuie de possions (rain of fish), the Germans commented that auf Malta regnete es Fische (in Malta it rained fish), and the Hungarians were told az utcán halásztak az emberek (people were fishing on the street).
The other end of Europe also caught a sniff of the Maltese flying fish story, as Swedish newspapers talked about how forbipasserende opsamler fisk fra gaden under uvejr (passers-by collect fish from the street during storms).
Euronews and BBC also reported on the fish-crazed Malta weather, but our favourite report will always and forever by the Mirror’s tribute to the “residents of Malta who enjoyed a free pick of seafood” as the gale-force winds blew on.
But the video was not limited to European shores… it even made it to countries like Turkey and China
Just like nobody could stop the wrath of the storm, nobody could stop the wrath of the fish. We’ve found online reports heralding from Turkey and China, which don’t commonly report on what does down in our island.
But put a wild, uncontrollable storm, flying fish and car windows into the same picture, and the story becomes practically irresistible.
Heck; the Xemxija video even made it to Argentinian TV news reports!
Photo by Laureano Ralon
It seems like literally everyone caught wind of last weekend’s antics
Guys, MSN reported on this story.
We’re officially one of those randoms news pieces that people briskly look at when they open their Internet server.
