The violin and bow disappeared from a bus after the owner was left stranded a motorway service station en route to Brussels in May 2024
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A violinist whose instrument and bow disappeared from a bus after she was left abandoned at a motorway service station is appealing for help to locate her instrument.
Myriam Hamela, a second-year violin student at the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels, was travelling from The Hague to Brussels by Flixbus on 4 May 2024, when the driver made a scheduled stop at a motorway rest area at around 8pm. Hamela got off the bus but when she returned it had already departed, taking with it her violin and bow and leaving her stranded; she claims that the driver had left ahead of schedule.
Hamela contacted a friend who attempted to meet the bus at Brussels North terminus and retrieve the instrument, but it was no longer on the bus and nowhere to be found. Two months on, Hamela’s violin and bow are still missing despite best her efforts to find it.
Hamela wrote on her Facebook page: ‘On Saturday 4 May I took a Flixbus from The Hague to Brussels (line 818) and the driver did not respect the stopping time at a motorway rest area. The bus therefore left me all alone on an unknown highway area and my violin remained on the bus.’
The violin is a copy of a Gasparo da Salò by Pierre Flavetta of Cremona, and the bow is signed Jean-Pascal Nehr à Paris. Hamela says ‘it is a 1995 pernambuco bow which is easily recognisable because it is missing the rectangular mother-of-pearl plate below the frog’.
The owner is offering a reward to anyone who returns her violin and bow to her.
Read: Missing: 18th-century Italian bass worth $150,000
Read: Missing: a 1754 Giovanni Battista Gabrielli violin stolen from Belgian train
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