Jasmin, bright company in Amsterdam Centrum

Salsa is the reason Jasmin is rarely the first person to sit down. She dances two or three nights a week when she is not working, and it shows in how she crosses a crowded bar, which is to say quickly, lightly, and with a smile aimed at whoever happens to be in her way.

At 22 she is the youngest sort of good company: bubbly, flirtatious in a harmless and genuinely funny way, and curious about everything, including your job, which she will find more interesting than you do.

She is petite at 160 centimetres, with long straight chestnut brown hair and brown eyes, and she dresses for the boutique hotels she likes best, playful rather than formal, with one detail that is always deliberate. Height is the only small thing about her, and she gets there in heels anyway.

Perfume is her other obsession. She can usually name what you are wearing, will tell you honestly whether it suits you, and keeps a shortlist of the small shops around Amsterdam Centrum worth a detour on a free morning. Mixology grew out of the same instinct for things that are built rather than bought; hand her a cocktail menu and she reads it the way other people read a wine list, slowly, with commentary.

She works in English and travels light through an evening, happy in a hotel bar and happier still if there is music somewhere in the building. Michelle shares the cocktail habit and the two of them trade recipes. If you are landing late and want company that lifts the room rather than matching your tiredness, put her name on the boarding details and we will handle the timing. She is also a very good sport about a plan that collapses, which in a city booked solid by Thursday evening happens more often than visitors expect.

Nothing about her ideal night begins with a plan. Jasmin turns up at a boutique hotel bar in the old city, reads the cocktail list out loud with commentary, orders something you would not have chosen, and is right about it.

Then music, somewhere with a band or a floor, because dancing takes up two or three of her evenings most weeks, and it shows in how she moves through a crowded room. She will ask what you do and find it genuinely more interesting than you do, which is disarming at eleven at night. If there is a free morning afterwards she keeps a shortlist of tiny perfume shops within walking distance of the canal ring, and she will give you an honest verdict on whatever you are wearing. It is usually a kind one.