Posted on 06/14/2023 7:38:01 PM PDT by algore
There will be no more going to Hel on bus 666.
The bus to the town of Hel on Poland’s Baltic coast has long been popular with tourists. But some Christian conservatives have protested against the use of a number signifying the devil on a bus leading to a place that sounds like the word “hell” in English.
The local bus operator, PKS Gdynia, announced this week that bus 666 would no longer run to Hel. It said it would run the line under the number 669 from 24 June.
Fronda.pl, a conservative Catholic website, called for a change in 2018, declaring that some people thought it was “an innocent joke” but it was “hard not to consider it a malicious inspiration”.
It conceded that Hel, a long verdant peninsula with white sandy borders popular with holidaymakers, was not actually an underworld occupied the departed, but said it would give credence to the “horror of soul death” and make people less confident of the afterlife. The Polish word for hell is piekło.
Employees of PKS Gdynia informed passengers about the change in an update about the timetable. Without elaborating, they announced: “This year, we’re turning the last 6 upside down!” on social media.
The route number isn’t the only pun in Polish transport. A circular tram line in Wrocław has been named “zero” for decades.
The local news portal Trojmiasto.pl said the line had operated under the number 666 since 2006, first as a local joke, before attracting riders from across Poland and beyond. Some people rode the bus simply to say they had taken the 666 bus to Hel, Polish media reported.
Fronda lamented the fact that many Polish journalists, even Catholic ones, took pleasure in the joke.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
No fun!
We have little electric substations around here. Each one has a number on it. The one with number 666 is about half a mile from me.
I wonder if this thread will reach 666 posts?
I have known a few atheists who still would have nothing to do with something connected to/labeled with 3 6’s. The phrase ‘just in case I am wrong’ comes to mind.
I don’t know if Polish even has a word for hell. Instead of “go to hell!” they say “go to the devil” (Idź do diabła!).
333, his little brother
999, his older brother
666degrees, temperature to cook roast beast….
Short article from 2017 about Flight 666 to HEL (airport code for Helsinki, Finland), taking off from Copenhagen, Denmark in the 13th hour of Friday the 13th (article date October 13).
“Some people rode the bus simply to say they had taken the 666 bus to Hel”
That’s the only tangible result of getting the number changed. The bus operator will get less money, and the town will get fewer visitors and less tourist money.
Big win for the Catholics I guess.
Maybe not a bus, but there has to be a road going there. I wonder if it’s paved with good intentions.
There was a U.S. 666 highway (heading north from Gallup, NM, through a bit of southwestern Colorado and into Utah), much of it through Indian reservations, but I think it was renumbered a few years ago.
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