It's great being a tourist
and leisurely wandering
around old towns and
villages seeing the sites,
but is it such a thrill for
the local residents?
Villagers living in the
area known as 'Old
Holland' outside of
Amsterdam have had
enough of visitors
traipsing around and of
tour guides with
megaphones disturbing their peace. They have got
together with local tour companies to create rules
of conduct for tourists. The rules include not
photographing residents without permission, not
strolling into their gardens and not dropping litter.
The new code of conduct is an attempt to deal with
the growing popularity of the region. Tourism is
booming and the number of tourists is expected to
rise by 50 percent in the next decade.
Old Holland is an idyllic area that matches people's
image of Dutch life from a slower, bygone age.
There are windmills everywhere and locals live in
beautifully preserved, traditional wooden houses.
Local resident Peter-Jan van Steenbergen told
Holland's Het Parool newspaper that the village of
Zaanse Schans is like an open-air museum. He
said: "I talked to one resident who opened his
curtains in the morning and looked into the camera
lenses of nine amateur photographers." He added:
"The visitors seem happy to knock on the wooden
houses to see if it is real wood. If you are the
resident of that house, that is not pleasant, of
course." He said the busloads of tourists were the
biggest nuisance.
Sources: dutchnews.nl / bbc.com / parool.nl