valentine's nostalgia

i am not usually a fan of the consumerist holiday known as valentine's. my personal feelings are that you should show love for someone all the time, not just on one specific day, and that showing love isn't necessarily characterized by flowers and cards. i, of course, enjoy this holiday more now that i have a steady husband, but i used to absolutely loath v-day. except for this one time (and this may wax long, so get comfy):
when i lived in russia, i was great friends with a hilarious group of girls. well, one moreso in particular, but the others were great, too. myla was my travelling parter. she and i were the only two out of our group that broke away from living in the dorms with the other english-speaking students in order to perfect our russian. on our holidays we always travelled, whether it was a long weekend or our spring break. (for our spring break we travelled through the baltics and poland, which is another story in and of itself) melanie was an energetic nymphomaniac who was obsessed with herself, but she never ceased to amuse us all. and chantal was the angel, a beautiful soul who was just a good companion to have at any time. when it came time for valentine's, we four decided we'd had it with that stupid holiday and made plans for a girls' night out. we made reservations at the idiot, a posh restaurant/bar that is hailed for its association with dostoevsky. we had a long meal, and much wine, and realized we were sitting across from a table full of men that were also speaking english (a commodity not overlooked!). most of them were older, but good looking, and they seemed to be having the same grand time as we, so we made aquaintances and invited them to join us. turned out, they were from all over (australia, netherlands, germany, england) and were in st. petersburg doing a documentary film on russian music. we took advantage of them in their drunken state and got them to promise to let us sit in on one of their sessions. and, come to find out, they were recording the st. petersburg symphony orchestra in none other than the mariinsky theater! what is so neat about that place is it was never destroyed and is the same as it was when built back in the 1700s when Catherine the Great ordered it. but i'm getting to the coolest part of my story: we met them at the agreed upon time on the side door, and they held to their word (and somehow remembered) and let us in. it was like it was a private performance just for us, as there was no one else in the audience. of course we sat in the president's box, best seats of all on plush velvet-covered chairs, and the accoustics were amazing. i honestly thought i'd died; we got to listen in as the orchestra played the likes of rimsky-korsakov, chaikovskii, and shostakovitch, among others. my favorite was rimsky-korsakov's russian easter overture. it was so beautiful, and the performances were just stunning. stunning. so that was the result of my favorite valentine's.
then, of course, after our private performance, the guys asked us where the good clubs were and we agreed to meet later that night and i ended up making out with one of them who was my father's age in the bathroom at a club and that's all i could think about, oh my god this guy could be my dad but he was pretty good at what he did. and perhaps that would make for a more interesting story, but now you know about my favorite valentine's day. the end.