In Poland, religious communities managed to cancel the “satanic” bus route 666, which runs along the highway to the resort town of Hel.
According to Sky News, under public pressure, the transport operator PKS Gdynia announced the change of the route with the “number of the beast” to 669, which will start running on June 24.
The piquancy of the situation was added by the fact that tourists traveling this route nicknamed it “Highway to Hel” (in the original, the city of Hel is called Hel – ed.) concerning the cult hit of hard rock legends AC/DC “Highway to Hell”, which translates as “Road to Hell”.
Residents have long drawn attention to the pun with the name of this bus route, many of them regarded it simply as a “harmless joke”. Meanwhile, the Catholic publication Fronda in 2018 called the use of the number 666 in its title “satanic nonsense”.
Over the past 10 years, the administration of the transport operator operating the flight has simply been bombarded with complaints from various Christian groups and individual citizens. Eventually, the company gave up.
“The board buckled under the weight of letters and requests that were sent to us, perhaps not in large quantities, but cyclically for many years with a request to change the line number,” commented PKS Gdynia press secretary Marcin Szwaczyk.
At the same time, he stated that Route 666 can return if passengers demand it.
“If the response is large and strong enough to restore the 666 lines, it seems to me that we will listen to our passengers and change this number,” said Shchvachyk.
It should be noted that the seaside resort of Hel is popular among tourists due to its remote beaches and forest trails – this 35-kilometer peninsula in the north of Poland is considered one of the most beautiful and unspoiled parts of the Baltic coast.