I just read this on violinist.com: The first victim identified in the cruise ship Costa Concordia disaster in Italy is a violinist from Hungary who worked as an entertainer aboard the ship, who had apparently gone back to his cabin to pack up his violin. You can read the whole story here. His name was Sándor Fehér. He had been putting lifejackets on some children and then went to his cabin to pack his violin.
Several people have asked me if this makes me think twice about cruising again. Well, no. Statistically I’m pretty sure that I have a better chance of dying in a car crash, or perhaps getting hit by a bus. But it’s still an awful tragedy. My heart goes out to all the friends and family of the victims.
On our most recent cruise (Celebrity Eclipse), there was a string trio that performed at a variety of venues around the ship. Chris and I really enjoyed hearing them play (yes, we’re very nerdy) and chatted with them a bit. They were all from the Ukraine and had just recently started playing together, though they had been doing cruise ship work separately for longer (I believe the violinist said 7 years?). This story made me think of them—they were really nice guys, very polite and personable, seemed to enjoy their work (or at least well enough) AND the violinist had arranged all kinds of awesome quartet arrangements (M. Naughtin, for instance) for trio!
I guess the moral of the story is to leave your violin on the ship? I’m sure he thought he had time…