Lasse Stolley was looking for a change in scenery after a planned apprenticeship fell through. So nearly two years ago the teenager began living on German trains. The epic journey has taken the 17-year-old from a small community in Germany’s windswept far north to the country’s southern borders and beyond.
Setting off in August 2022, he has travelled a staggering 650,000 kilometres (400,000 miles), the equivalent of going around the Earth over 15 times, while sitting on trains for more than 6,700 hours. “Being able to decide every day where I want to go is simply great -- that’s freedom,” Stolley told AFP in an interview in a cafe at Frankfurt train station. “I like that I can just look out of the window while travelling and watch the landscape quickly zipping by.
.. and the fact that I can explore every place in Germany.
” He travels with just a rucksack and lives mainly on pizza and soup which -- as a holder of a train pass -- he gets for free in rail operator Deutsche Bahn’s station lounges. Bumpy start With his broad smile, the lanky teen seems an unlikely figure to have decided to swap the comfort of his family home for the rigours of life on the rails. He had little interest in trains growing up.
He never owned a model railway, and had only travelled twice on Germany’s high-speed ICE trains before deciding to start living permanently on the network just after he turned 16. But after finishing secondary school, a planned apprenticeship in computer program.
