The news cuts through the morning gloom like a Polish summer sun: the legendary Highway to Hel bus is back. Not a new carpool lane to the underworld, as some might fathom, but a public transport route to the Baltic resort of Hel, a name that has long tickled English-speaking tourists. For decades, this bus line has been a source of amusement and, occasionally, alarm.
But its revival after a hiatus of several years has prompted fresh safety warnings from the British Foreign Office, and one must wonder: what does this say about our relationship with risk, with travel, with the very idea of a holiday?
