A new phenomenon, started by Belgian students in the 8 Belgian University cities, organizes drinking-parties on a riding bus. These parties are called “CANTUS”, which is Latin for a singing-session. These CANTUS’s have a very long, centuries old tradition.
Most students are member of a student-body, organized in clubs or brotherhoods linked to the region where the students come from. Since WW II, these clubs are coed. Every month such a club comes together in the basement or the back-room of the favorite pub to drink and to sing. The songs are original folk songs, sometimes very patriotic. A lot of the songs, however, are sexually explicit, and would be considered politically extremely incorrect in contemporary USA. In Belgium, boys and girls sing these songs together, they have a lot of fun, and drink a lot of beer. In fact, there are no other beverages than beer available in a Cantus.

A Cantus may last for 6 hours and more. Oh horror! This must be “binge-drinking”! Lucky for everybody: Belgian girls and boys have been raised by their families from childhood on to drink beer. Everybody knows how much is too much.
The new style Cantus is getting together in a bus, singing and drinking in the bus, riding to a meeting place, brewery, pub or restaurant, where an other bus with singing and drinking students from another university city shows up at the same time.
On our Belgian-Brewery-Tour-1997, we had the opportunity to meet such a party bus at the Brewery de Silenrieux in the Ardennes.

Newsletter July 1998