There are places that have a special quality them. And this place, where the E75 reaches its terminus for now, is one. But first things first.

The A1, which is what the E75 has been called for many kilometers now, takes me to Gdansk. This A1 ends just shy of the city limits, fraying into the E28, the S6, the E77, the S7, then the E75, and a few more besides. Suddenly, my Europastrasse continues on like a secondary road. I follow it, of course. It takes me straight downtown, past the train station and the old city, and on to the port. Here, it once again “steps” onto history-charged ground: the former Lenin Wharf, where—back in 1980—Solidarność was born (a good movie about this is Volker Schlöndorff’s Strike [2006]).

Endlessly long, straight streets, cranes, pipes running everywhere, train tracks, fences, barbed wire, and smokestacks. Finally, the E75 makes a curve with streetcar tracks built into the pavement. A leap in time, brick buildings. And yet another hairpin curve … a roof protrudes across the street, which is blocked by a rolling grille. This is where the asphalt ends and the sea route begins, though that’s been discontinued in this form.

I reach this point at dusk. It’s peaceful and quiet here in a way that I haven’t experienced on this drive for quite some time. It even seems to me like this is place of power of some sort. Some fisherman ply their trade, watched by a few onlookers. A silent quality hangs in the air. Out in the distance are a couple of ships. Birds, mostly seagulls. Their soft calls, the sound of the sea. This isn’t somewhere you’d normally end up, “just ’cause.” And even so, a few initiates do indeed visit this place, this place of transition for the E75.