Bars

Where would a student town be without bars? At the start of the academic year, when thousands of first-year students flood Tilburg, local media such as Univers produce many best-bar-in-town reviews. Obviously, it is a matter of personal opinion which one out of the dozens of town center bars tops those lists, but there is general agreement on which parts of town are the places to be: Korte Heuvel, Piusplein (picture), Stadhuisstraat and Paleisring. Bars such as Bolle, Brandpunt, Philip and De Boekanier generally rank high, possibly because they are also home base to students associations or perhaps because they slash their prices using dice, playing cards or cheap beer offers. Queues to get in to downtown bars may be so long on Thursday nights that they force students to turn elsewhere. RAW proves to be a favorite bar in the Spoorzone, Berlijn on Korvelseweg and Burgemeester Jansen on Piushaven.

Bar density

Downtown bar density has risen considerably over the years. Up until a few decades ago, there were still shops on Korte Heuvel, including a liquor store and the Giannotten bookstore, and some bar names are still reminiscent of those days, such as Bakker, De Slijterij and De Baret. These are long gone, as are the dance halls where, in the seventies and eighties, students danced the night away into the wee hours of the morning: Swinge bij Dinge and “progressive discotheque” De Spoel. Many former students who stayed on in Tilburg have fond memories of these nightspots and recently let their hair hang down at revival parties (called “Swingebijdingeding” and “Terugspoelen”).

'Those days

Around 1980, former members of anarchistic folk band De Veulpoepers (loads of shit) bought a café that bordered the red bike path between the town and the campus. They baptized it De Egelantier (“no bar ever had better beer”) after their greatest hit. For many years, this was a favorite watering hole for students on their way to or from the University. Closest to the campus, just around the Bredaseweg corner, has been bar Het Dorstige Hert since 1926. Not really a student bar, but the beloved stamping ground of those University’s staff or students who have cause for celebration. These days, though, with a Grand Café established on the premises, they would not need to leave the University grounds. Friday afternoons, there is the PV café for Employee Association members.