Three years after the cancellation of the popular and often commented on by the public bus line 666 towards the Hel Peninsula, this recognizable line is returning to Polish roads. In the summer season this year, the service on that route will be provided by the transport company FlixBus. The new line will connect Krakow and Hel every day, passing through Warsaw and numerous popular summer resorts on the said peninsula.
“Road to Hel”
The news about the return of number 666 caused, as expected, strong interest from the media and travelers on the Polish market. The representatives of the carrier emphasize that it is not only about the introduction of a new summer connection with the Baltic coast, but about the return of one of the most recognizable bus numbers in the country. The choice of number was deliberate, because the route number itself clearly suggests its final destination.
The history of this line goes back years, when the local carrier PKS Gdynia operated the route connecting Dębki and the city of Hel. The number 666 became extremely popular because of the play on words, as it happened that the name of the Polish city sounds almost identical to the English word for hell (“hell”), while the triple six in the biblical context is associated with the “number of the beast”. Due to this coincidence, the line attracted the attention of tourists who took photos of the buses and published them on social networks, calling the line “the bus to hell”.
However, despite many years of traffic, public pressure led to temporary changes in the organization of transportation. In 2023, after a series of protests and petitions from certain religious groups, the local transport company decided to change the line number to 669 – until now FlixBus appeared and brought back the famous triple six.
At the press conference, the company’s director for Eastern Europe Michael Leman he openly admitted that the number of the bus line was chosen completely on purpose: “Everyone will understand. It’s annual vacations. Let’s have fun, let’s make a joke about it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Annual vacation is also for fun,” he added.
The very name of the Hela peninsula, by the way, has nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxon term for hell. The name actually comes from Old Germanic languages where the word “hel” meant a dune or a hill along the coast. On the other hand, on medieval Danish maps the peninsula was marked as “Heel”, which directly referred to its specific geographical shape that resembles a human heel.
Jg44.89 / Wikimedia