In today's frantic world of iPhone updates and overbooked flights, de-stressing is as important as ever. Travel will always be nerve-wracking for some, but developments like silent dinners, forest bathing, and even therapy pigs and miniature horses at airports are helping travelers relax in all new ways.
Of course, unplugging becomes less of an issue if you already live in a place others plan dream vacations around. And according to the latest Global Least & Most Stressful Cities Ranking, as it turns out, Germany is the place to be if you want to live the sunshine-filled, debt-free life of your dreams, with four German cities appearing in the top ten alone.
Released by Zipjet, a London-based laundry and dry cleaning service with a surprisingly mathematical approach to information gathering, the study considered factors like salary, unemployment rate, traffic, mental health issues, amount of green spaces, rate of theft and murders, and percentage of sunshine hours to rank 150 cities from least to most stressful. After Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia, and New Zealand appeared multiple times in the top 20—no surprise, considering these are some of the happiest countries in the world. And good news for Seattle dwellers: Your city is the most relaxed in the U.S.
(If you're curious what Zipjet considers the most stressful city in the world, it's Baghdad, Iraq.)
Below, the 20 least stressful cities in the world:
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Hannover, Germany
- Bern, Switzerland
- Munich, Germany
- Bordeaux, France
- Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Sydney, Australia
- Hamburg, Germany
- Graz, Austria
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Seattle, United States
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Nice, France
- Dresden, Germany
- Oslo, Norway
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Helsinki, Finland
- Abu Dhabi, UAE
- Melbourne, Australia
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