The Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek celebrates a spring cherry festival each year, a memory of its rural days as a major cherry producer. One of the highlights of the festival is the pit-spitting contest.
The cherry-spitting has adult and children’s categories; each contestant gets two tries to spit furthest. The longest distance in previous Schaerbeek contests is about 15 metres, against a world record of 28.51 metres.
The festival and the contest date to around 2000, and also include concerts, spots and other entertainment. It was started as a way “to bring all of Schaerbeek’s residents together with a festival rooted in the commune’s tradition of donkeys and cherries.” Schaerbeek has a large immigrant population.
The donkeys are less evident than the cherries these days; a number are housed in the local Josaphat Park, but in previous times there were said to be more donkeys than people; they were key transport for local produce going to market.
