An iconic but controversial bus journey to a sandy peninsula in Poland is on the road again, thanks to marketing moves by coach operator Flixbus. Travellers will once more be able to take the “highway to Hel” trip on a bus listed under the number of the devil, 666, from summer 2026.
Hel is popular, thanks to its sandy Baltic shorelines, lighthouse, fishers’ cottages, and World War II fortifications. The bus trip there also gained momentum in its own right thanks to the play on words between the bus number “666” and the name of the terminus “Hel,” making it the “Highway to Hel” – a 1979 song by Australian rock group AC/DC.
But after years of operation between the seaside village of Dębki and Hel, bus firm PKS Gdynia dropped the route number 666 in 2023, due to concern in the heavily Roman Catholic country over its satanic connotations. As Travel Tomorrow reported at the time, a PKS Gdynia representative told press that the complaints were not huge in volume but were ongoing over a long period: “The management board buckled under the weight of letters and requests that were sent to us, maybe not in large numbers, but periodically for many years with a request to change the line number,” they said. Complying with those demands, the route was renumbered as the 669.
But now, in rock and roll form, Flixbus is flicking the bird at puritanical critics and bringing back the number 666, intentionally playing into the devilish associations of the town’s name and bus route.
FlixBus spokesperson Aleksander Kalenik told Poland’s TVN24: “The number 666 was deliberately chosen as a marketing communication element, intended to increase the visibility of the connection on the popular holiday route to Hel.”
@flashback_raf Welcome to Hel😈☀️🌊 #dronevideo #dronephotography #chałupy #polwysephelski #summer #summernails #views #explore #poland #polska #gdansk #trojmiasto ♬ original sound – Ian Asher
Michał Leman, managing director of FlixBus in Eastern Europe told a press conference the decision had practical reasons too: “It’s better when a route explains by itself where it’s going. In this case, there’s really nothing more to say. Everyone will understand,” he said.
The full route will have also have an “unlucky-for-some” 13-hour duration, taking passengers from Kraków to Hel, with various stops, including the Polish capital Warsaw but hopefully will not become a journey from hell. The timetable has also been purposely devised to avoid the build-up of traffic congestion during the high season along the Hel peninsula. It is set to depart Kraków at 6:00 am, arriving in Warsaw at around 10:30 am and finally reaching Hel just before 8:00 pm.
