I had to go to Belgium and Holland to drink beer and see art, which wasn't a bad tradeoff.

I'm impressed with Belgian culture, and a great part of it is the beer. The tiny country boasts - or at least the locals do - more than 3,000 different beers, each served in its own style of glass, many of them emblazoned with a brewery logo. That's helpful when you are sessioning, which happened a lot.

The plan was to get up and go to the small town of IngelmŸnster, but after sleeping in and taking a few wrong trains, we decided to go to our next day's destination, Brugge, or Bruges as it's known in the French-speaking half of Belgium.

Not only was I deeply impressed with the beauty and antiquity of the medieval city as we meandered through narrow streets and over canals. I was awed by the sheer number of small and cozy drinking establishments.

I was traveling with a book, pre-marked by a few of my brewing friends - "Around Bruges in 80 Beers," mapping out 80 bars in the city center and their beer specialties.

It was only a partial listing, we found. The spots are within walking distance, all small and personable, all with an enormous selection. I don't know how they fit it all, beers and glasses, behind the bar.

Cheers to European design, fitting lots of stock into very small spaces; the bartender's organization has a lot to do with it.

The bartenders are professionals. They're extremely skilled and knowledgeable about all the beers they serve, each style poured to perfection, finished and presented with a flourish.

I often saw a spatula used as a bar tool, cutting the head off of pilsners and saisons squarely.

After you watch the bartender place a perfect goblet of beer in front of you, it is a thing to be savored.

The Belgian culture seems to dictate responsibility. The bartender watches what each person drinks and does not pressure the clientele into another drink.

It's perfectly OK to hang out, snacking on the crackers and nuts placed in front of you. (No one drinks water, which I found a little odd).

Belgian bartenders know the alcohol content of their beers.

If I had a 5 percenter, of which there are few, another would be sooner in coming than if I had a 9-11 percent beer, and there are a lot of those.

While you linger over your beverage, it's easy to strike up conversation with the locals, who are incredibly pleasant and informative if you're not an ass.

Sitting at a highly recommended bar named Daisy's, we met Peter and Simone who, when they heard us talking about going to Amsterdam, quietly wrote us a list of the beer bars we should visit.

I don't think they knew what they were setting us up for.

Our timing was impeccable. We landed at a Maibock festival. About 25 small Dutch and Belgian breweries were represented. In the next column we'll talk about the Dutch brewing culture.

It's not just Heineken.