As we arrived under the rain of Amsterdam, the weather difference was quite a shock to our systems!  Nonetheless we set out to discover the city and meet the people hiding under their umbrellas to find out what makes the Dutch happy.

As we had a typical lunch of ‘kroketten’ and a hot chocolate we noticed an article in the local paper announcing that that particular day was decreed as ‘National Compliment Day’. ‘This could get interesting’ we thought!

So off we went to throw around compliments to everyone we saw. The reactions were very diverse… Some people blushed and shied away.

Others laughed and took it in good spirit. And then there were those who had no idea how to react. Apparently the Dutch are not very big on giving compliments. That would explain way the government made a national day to encourage them! The people we met said that the Dutch are very honest people and do not take compliments lightly.

A brother and sister duo refused to complement each other. They were funny about it though! The sister would say ‘you can say my scarf is pretty…’ ‘No, he answered, it’s not.’

We took it as our mission to put smiles on people’s faces by surprising them with compliments and then encourage them to spread the friendliness by randomly choosing another person to compliment. ‘I love your hat!’, ‘your hair is nice’, ‘You have very hot boots’, ‘you have a lovely smile’, ‘your eyes are sparkling!’ So many simple sentences that made people genuinely happy for the day.

We learnt that it doesn’t take a lot to put a smile on someone’s face and it’s those little moments that can make your day.  As we had the interviewees say something nice to another person it also showed them how they could influence someone else’s life even for just a second.