For a country that once epitomised Slavism's stagnant beat to state socialism, Poland today is a country undergoing vibrant and exciting change. Visitors to the central European state will find this welcome metamorphosis most pronounced in the cities, but a steady transformation is also taking root in many parts of the country, opening areas that have long been largely inaccessible .
My travels took me from Warsaw, in the centre of the country, to the southern capital of Krakow (one of nine European Cities of Culture this year) and further south again, deep into the alpine Carpathian mountain range.
The only other alpine mountain range in Europe, after the Alps, the hidden-away resorts here offer everything from winter skiing and mountain-climbing to healthy summer sojourns among traditional Polish villages and low-lying mountain walks.
Many of the activities are based in and around the small city of Zackopane, which spreads along a valley between snow-peaked mountains. Most houses are built of wood, and the surrounding area is worth walking around just to see the rich variety of houses, churches and shops which are built using traditional techniques.
The area owes its popularity to the Polish intelligentsia who re-founded Zackopane in the late 19th century. The local people, known as the Podhale, had managed to preserve authentic Polish culture through language and music, which found favour with the urban intelligentsia searching for an appropriate modern Polish identity.
I returned to Warsaw via the eastern hinterland, made up of the open agricultural plains and thick pockets of forests which are among the oldest and most dramatic in Europe: I stayed in towns such as Zamosc and Lublin whose streets are lined with often spectacular Renaissance, Baroque and Classical buildings, built from vast profits extracted from centuries of a latifundia-style system of large estates.
Different parts of the country have come under the sway of foreign powers at various times, leaving traces of former occupation. From the gothic Baltic port of Gdansk, formerly known as Danzig, to the "occupation" of the coal and iron ore region of Silesia, German influence is predominant in western Poland. The UNESCO-listed medieval castle of Malbork is an imposing teutonic citadel built by the Knights of the Holy Cross, whose offer to Christianise the heathen populations of the eastern provinces began centuries of Germanic involvement in Polish history. The remarkably well-preserved, and also UNESCO-listed, town of Zamosc, in the east, designed by Bernardo Morando, an Italian architect from Padua, in the 16th century, captures the Polish aspiration for the Italian Renaissance admirably. In what looks like a Tuscan scene, pastel-coloured buildings surround the arcades of the central square. Its state of preservation owes a lot to another Italian, Andreas del Agua, whose fortifications held back waves of invaders until modern military techniques overtook the defensive structures around the beginning of the 19th century, more than 200 years later.
No foreign power, however, has left its mark so pervasively as the Roman Catholic Church. The diversity of buildings and styles illustrates Poland's long association with the faith, from its introduction in 966, recorded by the chronicler Gall Anonim. The Church of Our Lady in Czestochowa, close to Krakow, is the spiritual capital of Poland and thousands of pilgrims flock there every year to see the Black Madonna icon in the Paulite monastery.
The Wawel cathederal, overlooking Krakow's old town, is the royal burial place, and holds the remains of the Polish patron saint, St Stanislaw. The Sigismund Chapel is a masterpiece of central European Renaissance church architecture, while the adjoining Wawel castle houses some of Europe's finest Flemish tapestries in one of the many castle museums.
Finally, there is the Gothic church of St Mary's in the medieval market square in Krakow. Ornate ceilings reaching up to the skies are illuminated by 15th-century stained glass windows. The crowning glory is the winged-wooded altarpiece carved by Nuremburg sculptor, Wit Stwosz.
Unlike the great cities of Europe, such as Paris or Rome, Warsaw's impact is a muted one. There is no unifying theme creating a single strong impression, yet disjointed urban planning, Baroque and classical churches and palaces, plain Soviet-styled apartment blocks and modern buildings create a cosmopolitan, eclectic city.
Some 85 per cent of Warsaw was razed by the Nazis, in revenge for an unsuccessful uprising led by the Polish resistance. Over 30 years, the old town area was faithfully rebuilt from rubble after the war, using paintings and old maps of the city and it is now the city's centre of culture, lively with musicians and street performers. The twisted network of narrow cobbled streets is dominated by the medieval market square where art galleries and restaurants are mixed with burgher houses and shops selling crystal, silver and amber.
Krakow, on the other hand, is a jewel in the Polish Crown with its famous old market square overlooked by the Royal hill of Wawel, seat of Polish kings until the late 17th century.
Its centre is compact and easy to see. Surrounded by medieval walls, its narrow streets lead to the medieval market square, the largest of its kind in Europe. In the centre is the rare example of a medieval cloth hall, the Sukiennice, which now houses a craft market and a gallery containing paintings by the 19th-century Polish painter, Jan Matejko.
The old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, used by Steven Speilberg as a set for Schindler's List, is currently undergoing a resurgence of activity as restaurants, museums and culture centres revive aspects of the once bustling Yiddish life of the area.
While the synagogues, exhibitions and monuments recall its vivacious, and more recent violent, past the deafening silence along its many empty streets is a haunting reminder of the 70,000 murdered Jews who once lived and thrived there.
Just outside Krakow, one of Poland's more unusual sites is at Wieliczka, a unique salt mine containing a complex of galleries, chambers and tunnels cut by hand from solid salt. Salt sculptures and chandeliers line an underground chapel that took 30 years to build. For an insight into Communist Poland, tourists can take a tram out to what remains of the largest steel works in Europe at Novo Huta, and the concrete forest of dreary white apartment buildings and the acres of industrial mills and works.
Travelling by train between the main cities is both comfortable and inexpensive, even in first class. Buses are efficient, and even less expensive, and they follow the shortest distance between two points - unlike some of the trains which can seem to go on forever.
However, getting frustrated with the trains may be missing the point in Poland, which is a vast and intriguing country of contrasting landscapes and fortunes.