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'Poland? What do you want to go there for?' That's what everyone had asked me when I'd told them my choice of holiday destination this year. I'd never really considered it myself but when someone suggested a Club trip there I'd thought, 'Yeah, why not?'

Eastern Europe - grim factory towns with black-faced urchins and antique technology; mile-long bread queues in every grey, oppressive dawn; radiation-crippled orphans in Victorian hospitals; centuries of bitterness and jack-booted repression; no hope?

Well, no. Poland is still enjoying its first taste of real freedom, only gained since the shattered country was reunited after the Second World War. The atmosphere is an optimistic, healthy one of regeneration after a painful and brutal history. The scars remain everywhere in the faces, attitudes and manner of the people - they still hate the Germans - but they sense that the dark times have ended and they can look forward to a brighter future.

Sadly, the process of westernisation is advancing rapidly. Zakopane is at the vanguard of this process by virtue of being Poland's premier mountain resort. Consequently, McDonald's have already found it, pizza places fester down the main street and the kids zoom around in rollerblades and Levi's. But, underneath this sophisticated veneer, the older Poland is still very much in evidence. Young men still go to America to make their fortunes, come home to build a house for their extended family and drive a taxi to support them. In summer, the conical hayricks are piled up with wooden rakes from grass hand-scythed around the steep-roofed houses. Horses tow carts through the streets and hooded, black-clad women sell strange, brown-skinned cheeses on street corners.

Religion is deeply ingrained in the Polish culture and the citizens of Zakopane are justly proud of their new town church, built with money collected by sympathetic Catholics in Portugal. We stood outside to listen to a service being held in its sumptuous interior. I didn't understand a word of what the priest was saying, but the universal sentiments of deep spiritual conviction need no translation.

Zakopane is still relatively unfrequented by the rest of the world but Poles from all over the country go there for a taste of bitingly clean air and to take in the beauty of the Tatra Mountains. The story of the local 15th-century priest who came new to the town inspired me to climb to the top of Gewont, the highest peak visible from Zakopane. Apparently he was so shocked by the carnality, corruption and general godlessness he encountered on his arrival that he made the townspeople drag a 15 foot-high metal cross 3000 ft up the mountain and plant it at the top. On a clear day, if you look hard enough, you can see it from the town. I laboured up the winding, rocky path as they had done, reached the base of the cross and was treated to a truly breathtaking view (the air's pretty thin at 6000 ft) across the Tatras into Slovakia.

While I was up there, I shared my ham sandwich with a little alpine accentor, a species of bird I saw then for the first time. Every few minutes she would appear, her beak stuffed with flies and caterpillars, and hop around my feet, tilting her head engagingly and fixing me with a bright, black eye. I was so enchanted with her that I completely forgot about my camera. My Minoltas were well used on other days, though, to record the stunning scenery of the Tatras and the grim face of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Being only a couple of hours drive from the main centre of Nazi genocide, it seemed almost sacrilegious not to go. I've learnt a lot about the Holocaust from Anne Frank's diary and "Schindler's Ark", survivors' stories and a trip to the Franks' Amsterdam hideaway. Heart-breaking though it was to see the roomfuls of shoes, eyeglasses, prayer shawls and stolen suitcases containing a whole family's history, piles of gas canisters, execution wall, punishment cells, ovens and gallows, I'm still glad I went. Poland has come to terms with its tragedy and is learning to live in the future, not its bloody past. It's a country I'll never forget.

And, by the way, it's not true that there's no birdsong in Auschwitz.

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