Barbaloburg

Cafe Loburg is a grand café on Molenstraat in the centre of Wageningen, and it has been part of the town's nightlife since 1978. It counts among the older and more recognisable cafés in the city, built around a spacious room and a friendly bar where conversation is never far away. The place draws a mixed crowd, young and old, and it has kept that everyday character even as its programme of live music grew. Live concerts began there only two years after the café opened. The first Loburg Live Concerts were organised in 1980, held in the café's music room, which holds around 150 people at most. That size shapes the experience: shows are close and compact, with the audience standing near the band rather than behind a wide gap of floor. The rooms received a makeover at some point, and the venue has continued to run music alongside its regular café business. The programme leans toward small and mid sized acts and covers a wide range of genres. Recent listings have included punk rock from Donder, the band De Baron, and a double bill of Panda Noir and Shamzon, which gives a fair idea of the mix of local and touring bands that pass through. For a university town like Wageningen, a room of this scale fills a clear need: a place where emerging bands can play to an attentive audience and where regulars can drop in for a drink without any event on at all. With more than four decades of live music behind it, Loburg has become a steady fixture on the regional circuit rather than a short lived experiment.