Highway to Hel

There are times when modern life throws up a story so perfectly daft that it feels almost churlish not to enjoy it. FlixBus has brought back the 666 bus route to Hel in Poland, and naturally some people are behaving as if the Antichrist has just bought a return ticket from Krakow.

Hel is a seaside resort. It has beaches, old buildings and a seal sanctuary. It is not, so far as we know, Satan’s Polish regional office. The bus does not appear to require passengers to renounce anything before boarding, although on a 13-hour coach journey one should probably keep an open mind.

The previous operator changed the number from 666 to 669 after complaints from religious conservatives, which is wonderfully depressing. Imagine being the person who looks at a bus route to the coast and thinks, “This is where the trouble starts. Not war, corruption, cruelty, greed or the usual daily buffet of human stupidity, but a number on the front of a coach.”

FlixBus, to its credit, has simply looked at the whole fuss and thought: marketing. And they are right. The 666 to Hel is memorable. The 669 to Hel sounds like a replacement service after someone has dug up the road near the retail park.

This is the problem with performative outrage. It usually helps the thing it claims to oppose. Nobody outside Poland needed to know about this bus. Now we do. The campaigners took a local transport joke and polished it into international publicity. You can almost hear the marketing department quietly trying not to giggle.

Faith should be able to cope with a bus number. That is not an attack on religion. Quite the opposite, really. Serious belief should not need protecting from a destination board. If your faith can survive plagues, wars, schisms and centuries of theological dispute, but starts wobbling because someone painted 666 on a coach to a beach resort, then perhaps the coach is not the fragile thing in this story.

Most people on that bus will not be making a theological statement. They will be going on holiday. They will have bags, snacks, chargers, possibly a travel pillow, and a growing hatred of the person three rows back who is watching videos without headphones. By hour nine, the number on the front will be the least infernal part of the experience.

And that is why I rather admire it. The 666 bus to Hel is silly, harmless and beautifully memorable. It is exactly the sort of human nonsense that makes life bearable. Not every joke is an attack. Not every pun is persecution. Sometimes a bus to Hel is just a bus to Hel.

Although after 13 hours, one may be forgiven for thinking the destination board had a point.