Stradivarius violin found in Swiss train station’s lost property office
What's your good deed for the day?
While traveling on a train headed for Switzerland's Bern train station, a musician left a priceless instrument on board, a Stradivarius violin, only to have it returned to the station's lost property office by a good samaritan.
According to the National Post, the violin, which is part of the elite class of violins produced by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari who created string instruments between the late 1600s and early 1700s, did not even belong to the musician who was carrying it.
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As the Daily Mail reports, the owner had lent it to a friend who left it on the train and was "terrified" when he or she had noticed it was gone and contacted police who then "made an appeal to the public to find the valuable violin and released CCTV footage showing a passenger walking off with it at a different station."
During his time, Stradivari built an estimated 1000 violins of which 650 are still known to be in existence today and have been priced from as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars to $15.9 million.
Known to "produce unparalleled sound quality" and given its priceless nature, one can imagine the relief that was felt when the violin turned up in the Swiss train station's lost property office in Bern on Sunday and returned to its owner.
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In 2008, a similar instance occurred when Philippe Quint, the Russian-American classical violinist, left a Stradivarius violin valued at $4 million in the back seat of a Newark, New Jersey, taxicab and had it returned by the same driver a few hours later.
As a thank you for his good deed, Quint gave the driver who returned his instrument a $100 tip and came back to later perform a 30-minute concert "outside of the Newark Liberty International Airport in the taxicab holding area."
"He saw how distressed I was," Quint said of Mohammed Khalil, the driver who returned the priceless instrument. "He just gave it back to me and he noticed I was in no condition to go home by myself. So he said, 'Why don't I give you a ride home?' I said, 'No, no, it's OK, I'll take a bus, I'll take another taxi. He said, 'No, I'm happy to give you a ride back, because you're my last customer.'"
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Quint was in fact Khalil's last customer as the driver retired after giving him a ride home that day.
Check out a clip of Quint performing outside of the Newark Liberty International Airport featured below.
