title: How to calculate the route between city X and city Y? #maps
body: <p>How would you calculate the route between two cities (for cars)? I only need the major cities in Germany.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Input</strong>: Start-city and end-city</p>
  
  <p><strong>Output</strong>: Start-city, city1, city2, ..., End-city</p>
  
  <p>When I'm looking into Google Maps I found the infos <a href="http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/maps/documentation/directions/#DirectionsRequests" rel="nofollow">here</a>. So it's well documented.
  I see some limitation: 2500 calls per day. You need to display the graphics. That's bad.</p>
  
  <p>But when I'm looking at openstreetmap or bing maps I cannot find the relevant information. Could you help me here? And are there similar services?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update</strong>: I've create my own custom <a href="http://graphhopper.com/" rel="nofollow">routing engine</a> in Java. Although this single requirement here wasn't the main reason.</p>