Teenager spends £8,500-a-year to live on trains travelling 600 miles a day

03 March 2024 , 20:38

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The self-employed coder is able to do this by using an unlimited annual rail-card (Image: Facebook)

A German teenager spends his life on trains - from sleeping to working - and has no plans to stop.

Digital nomad Lasse Stolley lives on trains, entirely legally, and travels around 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He travels in a surprising amount of comfort - spending his time in first class, sleeping on night trains and enjoying breakfast in DB lounges. He also showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres.

The self-employed coder is able to do this by using an unlimited annual rail-card. He technically has no fixed abode, but appears to enjoy the way he lives his life - which he shares regularly on his blog, Life on the Train. He decided to live on a train when he was sixteen, with his school days behind him and the "the whole world open."

He said: "Ive 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.’

"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.

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The German teenager has no fixed abode, but enjoys living on trains (Getty Images)

He further told Business Insider : "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.’ I use the app to organise the next connection in the evening and sleep while I race along the tracks towards my destination. I don’t have a place to retreat to. My home is the train."

For Lasse, this unique way of life costs him around £8500 a year. However, he has to make sure he catches the night train each night, or if things don't go his way, is forced to reschedule because it suddenly doesn't arrive. His parents needed a lot of convincing to agree to his decision, but once they realised it was a legal way to live his life, they agreed.

Zesha Saleem