Frankfurt: Lasse Stolli is looking for a change on stage after a planned internship. So, about two years ago, the teenager began to live on a German train.
The epic journey takes the 17-year-old from a small windy community in Germany to the country’s southern border and beyond.
Departing in August 2022, it has traveled 650,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) with more than 6,700 hours on board, equivalent to 15 Earth orbits.
“It’s great to be able to decide where I want to go every day – that’s freedom,” Stolli told AFP in an interview at a cafe in Frankfurt’s train station.
“When I travel, I like that I can look out the window and see the landscape fly by and explore all of Germany.”
He traveled with only one passenger and lived mainly on pizza and soup, which being a railway holder he got for free in the station room of the train operator Deutsche Bahn.
With a wide smile, it’s not like the young teenager decided to trade the comfort of the family home for the challenges of life on the rails.
He is not very interested in train growth. He had never ridden a classic train and had only traveled on Germany’s high-speed ICE trains twice before deciding to live off the grid for good at the age of 16.
But after high school, he took a planned course in computer programming. Then, looking for something to do, he stumbled upon a documentary about someone who lived on a train.
“I thought I could do it,” he said.
“At first it was just an idea, not a realistic one. But then I got into it… Then I thought, ‘Okay, I’m really going to do it.'”
After trying to convince him at first, his parents decided to support him.
He bought a rail card that allowed him to travel unlimitedly on the net and went from his home in Fockbeck, in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, to Hamburg and took the night train to Munich.
The first few days were difficult. Stolli can’t sleep at night – his railcard doesn’t allow him to use the night train with a sleeper – and he often goes home to see his family.
But he soon got used to life on the train.
He bought an airbag that he slept at night on the big double platform of the high-speed train.
A year later, he upgraded his travel card to first class – 5,888 euros ($6,400) a year – which gave him access to more spacious carriages and Deutsche Bahn lounges.
Now he doesn’t need an airbag and can sleep very well in a train seat and struggle in a regular bed.
“I’m in the usual bed, rocking the train at night,” he said.
Stolli even did a part-time program to get started while he was on the road.
He often travels to big cities like Berlin, the capital, or Frankfurt, the financial center of the country.
It also often goes to small towns and crosses the Alps, and is located in Basel in Switzerland and Salzburg in Austria, just across the German border – the south is covered by the rail map.
According to critics, life in the German rail system is in a sorry state after years of investment.
“Delays and other problems are definitely a daily occurrence,” Stolli said.
Train workers have been on regular strikes demanding better pay and conditions, disrupting the network and being forced to sleep at Stoli airport.
Deutsche Bahn declined to comment when asked what they thought about people choosing to stay on trains indefinitely.
However, although life on the German railway can sometimes be a headache, there are also unexpected difficulties – Stolli meets his lover in the lounge of the Cologne train station and finds romance during the journey.
Stolley says he doesn’t know how long he’ll live as a postmodern digital hobo — maybe another year or five.
“I have a lot of fun now and experience a lot every day.”
