Most of us have seen stories about retired couples who make their homes on cruise ships, or who permanently roam the world in their custom RVs, but they have nothing on a German teenager who lives on trains.
Lasse Stolley, 17, has traveled over 650,000 kilometers in more than 6,700 hours on German trains, all on an unlimited travel annual pass. It’s the equivalent of circling the earth 15 times.
He’s been doing it since August 2022 when he turned 16, left school, and found a promised apprenticeship in computer programming had fallen through. He got the idea of living on trains from a documentary film about someone who had done it.
Stolley says it was hard to get used to sleeping on the trains because of the motion and uncomfortable seats; he used to carry a small inflatable mattress to help with that. Eventually he got used to sleeping, and also upgraded to a first-class pass, which allows more comfortable sleeping—as well as access to Deutsche Bahn’s station lounges, where he feeds himself on pizza and soup.
While riding around the country, he’s not exactly idle: he works part-time on coding projects and app development for a number of customers. And he has a girlfriend, who he met in a station lounge in Cologne. She may be part of why he’s now not sure how much longer he’ll live his digital hobo life.
