A few weeks back, me and my girlfriend had agreed that we wouldn’t be together on Valentine’s Day. It’s not that we are broken up, but the fact that plane tickets were very expensive and that I needed some time to focus on healing my knee.

Fast forward a few weeks, I was looking at tickets and decided that spending Valentine’s Day apart didn’t seem right (and that ticket prices had dropped a bit). And so I decided to go.

The first step was deciding when to go. I mean, Valentine’s Day was certain, but the departure and arrival dates were still TBD. There were many variables at play: I didn’t want to take many vacation days; ticket prices also change depending on the days; the length of the trip determines if I need to buy extra luggage space; the destination airport (there are two in Brussels) determines how much I need to spend on the trip to her house.

The initial plan was to go on the 13^th and come back on the 15^th. After more reflection and gathering external opinions I decided on 10^th to 16^th: I have to take only one vacation day, and the prices were acceptable (more on that later), I had to buy extra luggage space, the destination airport was the furthest way.

At first, the prices seemed reasonable. However, since to work abroad I need to have the common decency to get the OK from my team and bosses, between my deciding on the dates and me actually buying the tickets the prices had increased by a lot. Still, my decision remained unchanged.

Every time I go to Brussels I get very eager to go. Usually, I share this eagerness with my girlfriend, but this time I had to go through it all alone. And if this was the case, I decided to have some fun with it.

I tried to drop some subtle hints during our conversations: I suggested that, since we were gonna spend Valentine’s Day apart, we should have dinner on a video call, and we should cook the same recipe for dinner, and it would be “as if we were together”.

During some of our video calls, I took it upon myself to put her as close to the truth as possible. It was fun talking to her, while all my packing mess was right behind the camera.

Eventually, the day came and I left my house at around 2 P.M. I’ve come to Brussels on six separate occasions and I have to say that this was by far the longest trip. Not because of the actual time, but because I was so so SO eager to see her, and her reaction.

Ever since I bought the trip, I brainstormed about the “grand reveal”. I had several ideas like ringing her doorbell and having her come to the window; making a video about the entire trip and sending it to her once I arrived, …

As good as those ideas were I went with a simpler approach. Before arriving, I texted her asking what were the advantages of living alone (she changed to her own apartment in January). After her answer and my arrival, I video-called her (not revealing where I was) and told her that I remembered one more advantage of her living alone. I then switched the camera to show her building.

I wish I had recorded her reaction, but all I could say is that she looked like a little girl on Christmas morning, and I’ve never seen her so happy. I wish I could surprise her every time. Anyway, this was my gift to my Valentine.