Traveling Between Berlin and Munich Is About to Get a Whole Lot Easier

On Wednesday, the E.U.’s most populous country got a little bit smaller. Thanks to a newly electrified stretch of railway track just opened across Germany’s Thuringian Forest, travel times between Berlin and Munich will soon be slashed. By December 2017, it will take a whole two hours less to travel between Germany’s largest and third largest cities.

Reducing the 505 kilometer (314 mile) journey to just over 4 hours, down from 6 hours and 15 minutes, will finally offer genuinely fast land transit across one of Central Europe’s most important routes. When the convenience of downtown-to-downtown travel is factored in, the high-speed rail link (trains will eventuall run at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour) will give planes and highways a run for their money.