Lasse Stolley is an 18-year-old young man from Germany who has a passion for travelling, but due to some unforeseen challenges, his planned apprenticeship fell through and approximately two years ago the teenager began living on German trains.
The journey took this seventeen-year old boy from a small community near the north pole of Germany to its southern borders and beyond.
Since August 2022, he had travelled on trains for more than 6,700 hours or roughly 650,000 kilometers (400,000 miles), which is equal to making over fifteen trips around the world.
“It’s just so great that I can decide every day where I want to go. That´s freedom.” Stolley said in response to AFP’s interview at Café at Frankfurt train station.
“I’m glad that it’s not always about looking out of the window while traveling and watching the landscape running quickly past me…as well as that each site in Germany can be discovered by me.”
With only one backpack he travels most of the time subsisting on pizza or soup which – being a rail pass holder – he eats for free in railway company Deutsche Bahn’s station lounges.
He looks like he couldn’t have bee expected to pick up such a strange hobby-traveling across a country instead of enjoying comfort and warmth of his family home.
Trains never interested him much during his childhood; he did not have any model railways or ride on high-speed ICEs twice before deciding to live permanently on their network soon after turning sixteen.
However, after completing secondary school studies and failing to secure an apprenticeship position in computer programming as originally planned, it was during his search on what next when he bumped into a film featuring someone who lived within trains.
He gave himself permission that “I could do it.”
At first it sounded like just an idea- such an unrealistic one- but then I kept getting into…and then I thought “OK, I am going to really do this.”
Although they initially discouraged him, his parents eventually gave their consent.
He purchased a train ticket allowing him to commute with the network without limit and left Fockbek in Schleswig-Holstein, where he lives for Hamburg and then took a night train into Munich.
At first, it was tough. Stolley was unable to sleep at night- because of no beds on trains – and kept going back home regularly so as to see his relatives.
However, he quickly adjusted to living on the trains.
And within a year; he upgraded his pass to 1st class, which comes at 5888 euros ($6,400) a year allowing him access to more spacious cabins as well as Deutsche Bahn’s lounges.
Railway affair
Nowadays there is no need for an airbed anymore and instead of having trouble sleeping Stolley has learned how to sleep comfortably sitting in the train seat compared with normal beds.
“I miss being rock about by the train sometimes during my nights in bed,” he said.
In addition Stolley requires just six hours sleep per night unlike most people who usually needs more than nine hours rest every night.
Furthermore when travelling around this country he likes visiting big cities like Berlin and Frankfurt which are financial centers of Germany.
He also often heads to smaller towns and travels through the Alps, and has been to Basel in Switzerland and Salzburg in Austria, just over the German border – the most southern points his railcard can go.
But living on the German train network, which critics say is in a sorry state after years of underinvestment, is not without challenges.
“Delays and other issues are certainly daily affairs,” Stolley said.
The train staff have staged regular strikes pushing for better pay and conditions thereby paralyzing the network hence forcing him into sleeping at airports.
When asked what they thought about someone choosing to live on their trains forever, Deutsche Bahn refused to comment.
Still however life on Germany’s creaking railways can sometimes be a headache but then again it has its bonuses; Stolley met his girlfriend at the Cologne rail station lounge while travelling around Europe.
“I don’t know how long I will keep up this way of living as a postmodern digital hobo,” replied Stolley when asked how much longer he would continue with it—perhaps another year or five.
“At present moment, every single day I am having a great time”, he commented.
