Meet the teenager who spends a whopping £8,500 each year to live on trains with his travels spanning an impressive 600 miles each day. Lasse Stolley, from Germany, has laid his roots on the Deutsche Bahn trains network.
He lives comfortably and legally in first class, sleeping overnight on trains and even enjoying breakfast in the operator’s designated lounges. To wash, he ventures to public swimming pools and leisure centres.
Lasse, who works as a self-employed coder, manages this unique lifestyle with the help of an unlimited annual rail-card. Although he doesn’t have a fixed address, he seems to love his life on the move, which he regularly shares on his blog, Life on the Train.
The decision to live on a train came when he was just 16, after finishing school and feeling that “the whole world was open to him”, reports the Mirror.
He said “I’ve been living on the train as a digital nomad for a year and a half now. At night I sleep on the moving Intercity Express (ICE) train and during the day I sit in a seat, at a table and work as a programmer, surrounded by many other commuters and passengers. I travel from one end of the country to the other. I’m exploring the whole of Germany.'”.
Lasse, now 19, added: “I decided to live on a train when I was 16 years old. My school days were behind me and the whole world was open to me. So in the summer of 2022, I decided to give in to my wanderlust, leave my parents’ house in Schleswig-Holstein behind and embark on a huge adventure.”
Speaking to Business Insider, he said: “If I feel like travelling to the sea, I take the train north in the morning. If I long for the hustle and bustle of the big city, then I look for a connection to Berlin or Munich. Or I take the express train to the Alps for a hiking trip.’
He said ne plans his journeys via the operator’s app in the evening, before getting some shut eye as he journeys towards his next destination. “My home is the train,” he added.
This unique lifestyle costs Lasse around £8,500 a year. However, he must catch the night train each night, or if things don’t go his way, he has to reschedule. While his parents didn’t wholeheartedly agree with his decision at first, Lasse said they eventually came round to the idea when they realised he was exploring Germany legitimately.
