The historic Dutch village of Zaanse Schans is well known for its windmills, which a heck of a lot of tourists want to go to see, BBC reported on Monday.
Indeed, they are some of the most picturesque examples in the Netherlands, and easy to get to from Amsterdam.
Last year, 2.6 million people visited - a gigantic amount for a small place with a resident population of just 100.
It is far too many tourists, says the local council. And so, it has announced that from next spring it will charge every visitor from outside the area €17.50 ($20.50; £15) to enter, to try to control the numbers.
It's very rare for a community to take such a measure, but talking to Marieke Verweij, director of the village's museum, you can understand why they want to do this.
“In 2017 we had 1.7 million visitors... this year we're heading for 2.8 million,” she said. “But this is a small place! We just don't have room for all these people!”
Worse, said Verweij, visitors often “don't know that people live here so they walk into their gardens, they walk into their houses, they pee into their gardens, they knock on doors, they take pictures, they use selfie sticks to peek into the houses. So no privacy at all.”
The planned entrance charge is threatening the livelihoods of Zaanse Schans's retailers and restaurant-owners, said Sterre Schaap. She co-runs the gift shop, which is called Trash and Treasures.
“It's awful. It will mean that people who don't have a big wallet won't be able to come here,” said Schaap. “It will mean that we will lose a lot of our shoppers. If you're with a family of four and you have parking, it will be around €100. So people won't have a lot of budget over for other stuff.”
