High Class Homeless?

On Tuesday night, I had the chance to go to a concert at the Moscow State Conservatory. It was absolutely fantastic, and I think it has made me fall in love with classical music again, but more specifically with cello and bass music. I was sitting with a few of my friends from Uni, and a homeless guy sat down next to one of us. It was obvious he was homeless by his smell, his 3-4 bags of things, and the unkempt nature of his hair/beard. The funny thing about this was that even though he was obviously homeless, he still managed to find a suit jacket that looked pretty new. I suppose it helping that the concert was free, but in any case, it seems quite interesting that a homeless person would take the time to find out when a classical concert was going to be, and attend. I suppose that Russian homeless people have high class tastes when it comes to music!

On the other side of the coin, I recently saw a man rummaging through a briefcase in a corner on the street. At first I thought that he might have dropped it, and broken it, but then it was apparent that he was searching through it and taking things that he liked and putting them in his own bag. That made it so obvious that he had stolen the briefcase, and was looting it. If it had been in the States, I might have tried to rescue the belongings of whoever's briefcase it was, but since my command of Russian language is mediocre at best, and I was carrying about $300 in recording equipment that did not belong to me, I figured it was better if I just passed it by. Also, there was no one around to help me, should it have turned out badly. Maybe next time...