When I was young, piss poor, naive, and stupid, a number of my university labmates had a presentation to deliver in Ottawa. Because they were presenting, their respective profs paid for their expenses for the trip. I was the new guy at the time, so I didn't have any legitimate reason to ask my prof to pay for the trip if I were to go. Still, I was new to Ontario, and have never been to Ottawa yet at that point, so I really wanted to go.
As luck would have it, the organizers sent out a call for volunteers. In exchange for some free labour -- which basically boiled down to some admin / clerical stuff, manual labour, plus a bunch of seminar moderator work, the volunteers get to attend the conference for free. I jumped on the opportunity, and even managed to convince my prof to pay for the dirt cheap dorm accommodation during my stay. I offered to drive 2 of my labmates to Ottawa, and they agreed to pay for gas (which was gonna be covered by their prof anyway). So off to Ottawa we went -- minimal cost to myself for a multi-day trip to Ottawa. Win #1.
Day 1 was eye-opening because I have never been in that kind of environment before. In one of the presentations, I even managed to ask a smart aleck, but totally sensible and legitimate question that left the presenter stammering in a good moment of awkward silence. But other than that, the day went by fairly normally. A bunch of students, myself included, went out for dinner & a drinks together after the conference, and I suspose that was pretty normal.
I had moderator duty in the morning of Day 2, but was free to do my own thing in the afternoon. Supposedly, I should have used that time to attend the presentations that I was interested in, but nothing had caught my eye. So instead of staying at the conference, I sneaked out to do some sight-seeing in DT Ottawa. Just as I was leaving, I ran into a very pretty Caucasian girl who was also skipping out from the conference for the afternoon. She recognized me from the smart aleck question that I asked in Day 1, and after a bit of small talk, we agreed to go sight seeing together.
My memory is failing me now, but I vividly remember her beautiful eyes were a rare colour -- either hazel or gray. She was an international student from Europe studying in Canada, and she had a beautiful French accent. We walked along Rideau Canal, up to Parliament Hill, checked out the Rideau Locks, toured around Byward Market -- basically a bunch of pretty standard touristy stuff. We were having a great time, and we ended up having dinner somewhere together as well. The day had turned into an unplanned but totally wonderful date, and it was one of the few rare times for me with a Caucasian girl.
I walked her back to the dorm, and she thanked me for spending a wonderful day with her. Before she left, she leaned in and gave me a quick peck on my cheek. Being young, naive, and stupid, I totally did not know how to react, and was just kind of stunned there.
She bid me goodbye, and said she'd see me again the following day at the conference. I was still too stunned to give any sort of meaningful reaction, and I stood there for quite a few more minutes before I was able to gather myself and head back to my dorm.
Because of my absence, my labmates asked a few questions when I got back to the dorm. But they didn't really pursue on the topic, and we quickly wrapped up for the night.
The 3rd and last day at the conference was only a 1/2 day thing. Try as I might, I unfortunately couldn't find the same girl anywhere on the conference grounds at all. I was really quite bummed because I didn't ask the girl for her contact info during our time together.
To this date, I continue to have some very fond memories of Ottawa.