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Local Germany
09-05-2025
- Local Germany
What's the best way to travel between Berlin and Munich?
According to Deutsche Bahn, the number of train passengers between Berlin and Munich doubled to about 3.6 million per year after a high-speed rail line opened between the two cities in 2017, which translates to approximately 10,000 train passengers per day. Industry figures suggest that rail travel accounts for roughly 40 percent of journeys between the two cities. Of the remainder, approximately 35 percent travel by air, 20 percent by car, and five percent by coach or bus. Those are the options – but which is the best? Below, we've set out the various pros and cons. The prices shown are for one-way journeys and are averages unless otherwise stated. Bus companies, train operators, and airlines offer numerous deals for off-peak travel – and it always pays to book well in advance if you can. For train travellers, Deutsche Bahn's Bahncard 25 is an affordable way to nab a 25 percent discount on rail fares. Train Taking a train from Berlin to Munich (or vice versa) takes between just about 4 and 4.5 hours and can cost as little as €17 – if you don't mind when you travel and are happy to book at least a fortnight advance. According to Omio , the average price of a one-way ticket is €113 (if you book on the day). There are approximately 20 trains running daily. Passengers wait on the platform at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Christoph Soeder Travelling by train has a number of additional advantages, including city centre departure and arrival, freedom from security checks, and the smallest carbon footprint - roughly 22kg of CO2 - of all the available options. To book tickets, visit the Deutsche Bahn or FlixTrain websites. READ ALSO: New Munich-Paris high speed rail service planned Flying As with trains, there are approximately 20 flights a day between Berlin and Munich, and the average fare is around €100 (although they can be much more if you book last minute). The flight time is just under an hour, but both airports are some distance from the city centre. Once you take into account the amount of time it takes to travel to and from the airport(s), and the time spent clearing security and waiting for luggage, the average journey time tends to be around 5 hours. Advertisement As you might expect, this is the least environmentally way to travel: according to Atmosfair , a roundtrip from Berlin to Munich produces 300kg of CO2 per passenger. German airline Lufthansa runs nearly all direct flights between the two cities, so if you want to fly, you can book directly through them or a price comparison website. READ ALSO: Munich, Vienna or Salzburg - Which is the best airport to fly from? Bus Travelling by bus is both the cheapest and the slowest method of making the journey. A ticket costs around €17, but the journey can take anywhere from 7 to 11 hours. The level of comfort tends to be slightly worse in comparison to a journey by train, and the carbon footprint slightly higher. If you're looking to save a few euros and have missed the boat on a low-cost train tickets, visit the FlixBus website to nab an affordable bus ticket. A Flixbus stands in the Central Bus Station in Berlin. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Fabian Sommer Car From an environmental point of view, there isn't much difference between driving and flying between Berlin and Munich (assuming you're alone in the car). The distance between the two cities is just under 600 km and the journey generally takes somewhere between 5.5 and 6.5 hours, depending on traffic. The cost in petrol is likely to be somewhere between €60 and €80. Parking in Berlin is relatively straightforward but can be far more of a problem in Munich. READ ALSO: Why are fewer people taking domestic flights in Germany? Rideshare In comparison with other countries, Germany's ridesharing ( Mitfahgelegeneheit ) infrastructure is reasonably well developed. A less flexible, but far more social, alternative to driving, it's also cheaper and greener. Platforms which specialise in putting people and cars together include: Blablacar , Mitfahren and Mifaz . Deals will vary, but generally you'll simply pay a contribution to the petrol costs. Advertisement Which is best? If you value flexibility and privacy, you may want to drive – but trains remain the fastest, most convenient, and greenest option for most people travelling between Berlin and Munich. As an alternative, ride-sharing is an excellent low-cost and climate-conscious alternative for those who have no problem sitting in a car with strangers. Do you have any tips on the best way to travel between Berlin and the Bavarian capital? Let us know in the comments below or by dropping us an email at news@ .
Vox
25-04-2025
- Health
- Vox
Could this $10 weightlifting supplement be a depression treatment?
covers health for Vox, guiding readers through the emerging opportunities and challenges in improving our health. He has reported on health policy for more than 10 years, writing for Governing magazine, Talking Points Memo, and STAT before joining Vox in 2017. Creatine, a cheap and common diet supplement, may also help with treating depression, according to new research. Christoph Soeder/Creatine — yes, the favorite of gym rats everywhere, a supplement many of us have taken ourselves — is a naturally occurring compound that is already found inside each person. Scientists have been studying creatine since the 1830s and, for more than a century, we have known that it was pivotal for producing energy in our muscles. That, as anybody who was alive in the '90s may remember, is how creatine first exploded as a consumer product. Swedish researchers published influential research in 1992 demonstrating creatine supplementation's effectiveness in improving stamina and recovery during the short bursts of physical exercise. It didn't take long after that for creatine supplements to hit the shelves of drugstores and workout gyms nationwide. And it was popular. Not only was it cheap — a 10-ounce jar of creatine costs $17 on Amazon — but it was also an easy way for bodybuilders and exercise enthusiasts to improve their performance. Today, as many as one in four adults say they have used creatine; $400 million worth of it is sold in the US every year. And this was a supplement that really worked: A 2018 meta-analysis of the available research concluded that creatine is 'the most effective nutritional supplement available to athletes to increase high intensity exercise capacity and muscle mass during training.' Across years of studies, no dangerous side effects have been detected. But the most surprising use of creatine supplements is in a setting that could not be further from the image of jacked-up bodybuilders pumping iron: treating depression. In the early 2000s, scientists established creatine's importance not only for muscle use but also for brain function. The compound helps your brain to convert nutrients into energy and scientists concluded that poor metabolism could help to explain various psychiatric disorders, including depression. In layman's terms, if your brain wasn't processing energy efficiently, it could have these negative side effects. If that were true, it would follow that more creatine could improve a person's brain metabolism and thereby ease their depression. A decade ago, the first clinical trials began testing whether creatine supplements improved depression among people who were also receiving antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. The results have been impressive: A 2024 meta-review concluded that creatine had proven its effectiveness in supplementing those other treatments, leading people to feel better more quickly and be less likely to experience depression again. Now comes a new study, out of India, suggesting creatine could be helpful in treating depression without antidepressants being involved — a preliminary but potentially important finding as we search for cheaper and easier ways to provide help to more people who need it. A fascinating new creatine depression study in India The study, published earlier this year, was tiny and flew under the radar: 100 participants, in Dehradun, a city of 800,000 in India's far north. Lead researcher Nima Norbu Sherpa of Glasgow Caledonian University received a grant from an India-based charity, the Universal Human Rights and Social Development Association, to run the experiment. The setting is telling: Part of creatine's appeal in mental health treatment is not only its potential efficacy but also that it's cheap and doesn't require a professional clinician; patients can take it on their own. That made Dehradun, a developing city with a lot of low-income patients and relatively few mental health clinicians, a logical place to test whether creatine could improve people's well-being without antidepressants, said Riccardo De Giorgi, a clinical lecturer in psychiatry at Oxford and co-author of the paper. The 100 participants, recruited from the city and small surrounding villages, were split into two groups. Both groups took part in talk therapy sessions. One group also received 5 milligrams of creatine every day, while the other got a placebo. After eight weeks, both groups were improving — cognitive behavioral therapy itself is, of course, a well-attested treatment for depression. But the patients who took creatine on top of their therapy were doing better still. The participants answered a nine-question survey at the beginning of the study, which provided a one-number score of the severity of their depression symptoms. People in both groups started a little below 18 on average, indicating moderately severe depression. At the end of the study, the patients taking creatine reported a score of 5 on average, while the control group registered at 11. Eleven people who were taking creatine throughout the study reported going into remission, meaning they could effectively return to normal life; only five people taking placebos said the same. Both groups had about 20 people discontinue their treatment — not uncommon for people with depression, the authors noted. The reported side effects for people taking creatine were mild. It is an eye-catching result, even as De Giorgi emphasized repeatedly that the findings were 'incremental and preliminary.' The inevitably sensational nature of the finding — a bodybuilder supplement can help with depression? — warrants being clear and cautious in how we interpret the findings. 'Previous sensationalist messages in this research area, e.g., creatine, physical exercise, keto diet, have caused more harm to the science than benefit,'' De Giorgi told me over email. For one, the high dropout rate is reason for skepticism about the precise size of creatine's effect. More research that replicates the same results is needed before we can be confident that creatine plus therapy is a winning combination. But it's an area of research worth watching. Peter Attia, a physician who writes about longevity and health enhancement and was not involved with the study, wrote in covering the study's findings that 'since many people already use creatine as part of their supplement routine, it could be an easy addition for those looking to improve mental health without major lifestyle changes.' Its affordability and ubiquity could also make it appealing for people with fewer resources, like those who participated in the India study. He did, however, also caution that more evidence would be necessary before we can figure out whether and how creatine fits into 'the therapeutic toolbox.'
