A half hour sitting by the side of that cardinal artery is enough to spot the licence plates of a dozen or more European countries: Finland or Moldova, Belarus or Bulgaria . . . this shared stretch of the E30 and the E55 is paradise for those of more nerdish inclinations. But somehow, number plates aside, these two roads between them seem to sum up what hidden europe is all about.

The E30? Where does it actually go? It's often colloquially referred to as the Moscow to Rotterdam highway, though in truth it doesn't really go to Rotterdam, but passes some way north of the Dutch city. Even to claim that the E30 runs from Holland to Moscow is sorely to diminish this road's full extent. For the E30 casts its tentacles much further across the continent. It is the Eurasian equivalent of the Pan American Highway.

The E30 links a port on Europe's Atlantic seaboard with one on the Pacific. It starts in the southern Irish city of Cork, and, aided and abetted by a ferry or two, traverses Wales and southern England to reach the Hook of Holland. And then via Den Haag and Hanover, passing close by the hidden europe offices and over the Oder River into nearby Poland. Then across the open expanses of White Russia and on to Moscow. Now that's close on 3500 km already, but actually once it reaches Moscow the E30 has run less than a third of its total route.

For the E30, newly extended eastward a few months back, when President Putin ceremonially opened a new bridge over the Amur River, now traverses Siberia to reach the rocky Pacific coast at Nakhodka – 9500 km east of Moscow! It eastern extremity used to be the city of Celjabinsk, in Russia's Ural region, where the E30 ground to an uncertain end under the gaze of a monumental Lenin on Revolution Square. No longer though! Nowadays, the once great tea trading city of Celjabinsk is no more than a staging post on a much more ambitious journey, one that takes the E30 east through Siberia, and across swamps, forests and great rivers, only eventually to end on the Pacific coast at Nakhodka, where the steamers still set sail for Japan.

The other route that identifies us is the E55. So what of that? It's one of Europe's longest north – south routes. Its Mediterranean extremity is at Kalamata in southern Greece, more famous for its olives than for long distance traffic, and the road tracks north up through the Peloponnese into Epirus, hops over to SE Italy on a ferry, then follows Italy's Adriatic Coast all the way to Venice, before crossing the Alps to Salzburg and on through Prague and Dresden to Berlin. No rest here, though, for the great highway heads north to the Baltic, on to Copenhagen and to Helsingør where it ends on the shore of the Öresund under the shadow of Hamlet's great castle. Shakespearean trinkets abound, even though the bard himself never went near the place. Nowadays, of course, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would, as likely as not, be long distance truck drivers pondering their next trip south on the E55 rather than courtiers exchanging banter with a wayward prince.

One day, when we've a week or two to spare, we'll head up to Helsingør, stock up with a jar or two of Kalamata olives, and drive the E55 south. And if we can, we'll mark our arrival in Kalamata by buying a copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet. As to the E30, well that would take a month or more, and it's a journey which we'll start in Nakhodka Port with a pint of Guinness, and end in Cork, where, surely, by the time we make it, some enterprising soul will have opened a Russian restaurant. If anyone does both the E30 and E55 trips before us, let us know. It's roads we're talking about here, not food additives!

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