The deed is done!!! I’ve arrived in Vardø. It lies farther east than Cairo or Istanbul, but more importantly: farther north than practically everything else, even Murmansk. I’ve driven the entire length of the E75, incidentally setting a world record in the process!

To me, this was originally a drive from one end of the world to the other. But at some point, that started seeming pretentious. And the following thought stayed with me for the duration of the trip: Why should Linz, of all places, represent the center of the world? Is the world a disc or a sphere? I’ve already pondered that a bit in this blog.

And I ultimately arrived at a great insight: the Earth is, in fact, round. So there is no end of the world! We’re all equally central! But Europe has an end. Europe is a disc!

If one were to take two pieces of string and directly connect the E75’s two endpoints of Vardø and Sitia—doing so once in Europe as it’s actually shaped, and then in a Europe cut out of the globe and pounded flat—the difference between the two strings (that of the curved Europe and that of the flat one) would be just 60 km! Though I’ve taken more than 60 kilometers of detours simply due to construction sites and the like. In any case: Europe is flat, but the world is round. For which reason Europe has several ends, Vardø being one of them and Sitia another. The world has no end!

So finally, I have a good explanation. This thought had to ripen over the entire drive before it fully coalesced. And now, satisfied, I proceed to drive toward this end of Europe.

They’re already waiting for me in Vardø, and they welcome me cordially, greeting me warmly by saying: “Welcome to the End of Europe”—and I’ve arrived.