Get your kicks on the e3

Under the title “Get your kicks on the E3” the Dutch journalist Tijs van den Boomen wrote a series of articles for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad between 12 June and 28 August 1999. The series concerned the fate of the E3, one of the former arteries of the so-called E-road network. The E3 formed part of an extensive network of European main international traffic arteries spanning the continent since 1950. The Inland Transport Committee of the ECE sponsored the network. The route of the E3 was renumbered in 1975, but as one of the former large transversals of the network Boomen nevertheless wanted to trace the impact it still had today on the places it used to connect.

Boomen reconstructed the story of the E3 by traveling from Vaalimaa on the Finnish-Russian border to Lisbon. Boomen found the old E3 was still very much alive. He stumbled upon the Swedish roadside café E3 Baren, the transport firm E3 Spedition & Transport in Padborg, Denmark, the E-DRY discotheque in the Ruhr area near the German-Dutch border, and the E3 beach at a sand quarry in the Dutch village Eersel. The former artery also gave its name to the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, a single day semi-classic bicycle race in Flanders, which had its first official edition in 1958 and is organized yearly up to today.

The E3 also appeared in the stories of passers-by the journalist met on his quest. A former migrant worker effortlessly summed up the passage points along the E3 stretch that used to bring him from Portugal to his work at the Renault factories in Paris. A man traveling with his family to Morocco had been undertaking the journey regularly ever since 1966 when he emigrated to the Netherlands to work in a chicken slaughterhouse in the Dutch town Barneveld. In Belgium Boomen found Rogier Claerhout, who had worked in maintaining the Belgian part of the E3 after it was finalized in the early 1970s. The Belgian road worker happily presented the Dutch journalist with an E3 memorial book and a bright orange overall with the E3 sign sawn on it.