The picturesque Dutch village set to charge tourists an entry fee

Historical Dutch village Zaanse Schans is known for its windmills that many tourists want to see a public.

Indeed, some of the most important examples in the Netherlands and Amsterdam are easy to reach.

Last year, 2.6 million people visited – a gigantic amount for a small place with only a 100 -set population.

The local council says there are many tourists. And thus, from the next spring, he announced that he would blame each visitor from outside the area to try to try to control numbers € 17.50 ($ 20,50; $ 15).

It is very rare for a community to take such a precaution, but when you talk to Marieke Verweij, the director of the museum of the village, you can understand why they want to do it.

“We had 1.7 million visitors in 2017 … We are going to 2.8 million this year,” he says. “But this is a small place! There is no room for all these people!”

Worse, visitors often “people do not know what they live here, so they enter their gardens, walk to their homes, pee in their gardens, knock on the doors, take photos, use selfie sticks to look at the houses. So there is no privacy.”

I leave the museum and pass by a ram parking lot in the general direction of windmills. I probably shouldn’t say that, because it will make the problem even worse, but these are some magnificent windmills.

One of them is wood and green painted. Another has walls of reeds.

It often takes the wind and turns sails. This is a good landscape – and most people want to take a picture.

Of course, many people do that. Windmills are still a quite long way, but at the best points, visitors are very civilized selfie-ranks.

On a small bridge, there is a little queue that causes a channel towards windmills. As I progress, I feel Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Italian and Russian.

The plan is to ensure that everyone makes online reservations and pays. One thing you have to do often is to visit museums now.

The sweetener for tourists, up to € 17.50, accept two things that they have to pay separately – Introduction into the museum and windmills.

The first includes a picture of the local windmills of Claude Monet, the French impressionist, who visited in 1871. In the second, you can see how the Dutch in the 17th century, not only to grind cereals, but also to paint or saws, such as grinding pigments.

If only half of the existing numbers continue to visit after the entrance fee, annual revenues will be around 24.5 million €.

The Council plans to spend the money for the care of windmills and for the new infrastructure. For example, new toilets. However, shops and restaurant owners are not happy at all.

Stores should be said, a little attraction within themselves. The staff wears traditional costumes in the cheese shop and shows blockage shows in the shoe store.

And they are found in old and beautiful wooden houses. For example, antiques and gift shops from 1623.

Sterre Schaap threatens the livelihood of the planned entry accusation of Zaanse Schans and the restaurant owners. It runs the souvenir shop called garbage and treasures together.

“This is terrible. It will mean that people who don’t have a big wallet can’t come here,” Schaap says. “This means that we will lose most of our shoppers.

“If you have a family and park for four people, it will be around 100 €. So people won’t have much budget for other things.”

I go to the windmills, a young woman photographing her friend and a couple who receive a selfie from Germany.

On the balcony of one of the windmills, I talk to Ishan from Canada by looking at the impressive plain of the Netherlands. Orum I don’t know if I will pay € 17,50 to come here. Just seeing just a few windmills is a bit upright, or he says.

However, Albania, Elisia, grew up in Greece and now lives in the Netherlands, saying that she will definitely pay this amount. “These villages are not too big and they lose their charm when they are too many tourists, or he says.

Steve, who is dealing with his family from Massachusetts in the United States, makes calculations and can see the good side of the upcoming accusation.

“People like me,” Steve says, “Look at the windmill and ‘No, I won’t pay extra to go there’, but I won’t hesitate if all are included.”

He says it will be a more complete experience, not a bad deal.

The agreement is also a sign of times. Rachel Dodds, a tourism professor at the University of Metropolitan, Canada, draws attention to several comparable cases.

“Butan receives an entrance fee a day to visit the country. Venice, of course, is probably the most famous one for daily trippers,” he says.

Meanwhile, the United States and the UK demand travel authority or visa fees for foreign nationals to visit them.

Nevertheless, the villages that demand entrance fees are still very rare. Other existing examples, Devon, Clovelly in the UK, medieval Civita de Bagnoregio and Corenno Plinio and Bali in Italy, the private owner of Penglipuran in Indonesia.

While waiting for my bus to leave Zaanse Schans, a bus load comes and shifts credit cards to pay driving.

Those who come within a few months will also dig for prepaid entrance tickets.