Translator: Michael En Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
One moment, please.
That ruined my lipstick, but anyways.
Hello.
I am Leonie.
I am 23 years old.
I am a university student.
And I live in…
In our society, it is customary
to introduce ourselves with certain facts to get to know each other.
'Hello, I am , ,
, and .'
People used to have that one place they would tell you;
the place they were born,
where they lived and worked.
Think of the places that are important in your life.
How do you introduce yourself?
Do you have that one, single place,
by which you define yourself, so that others can place you?
Someone is already shaking their head.
Me neither.
This is my tenancy agreement.
On the 1st May,
I terminated my contract for my flat in Stuttgart,
and ever since, have had this train card in place of my own living space.
With this card,
I can board any train in Germany, for one year,
without having to buy a ticket because I already have one.
My daily life looks like this:
I study Media Studies and Sociology in Tübingen.
Before that, I used to live in Stuttgart, where I have friends and family.
My boyfriend lives here in Cologne.
My grandmother lives in Bielefeld, my hometown.
My mother moved to Berlin a few years ago.
Since 1st May, I have been traveling, by train, between these places.
After all, I no longer have my own living space.
I usually spend the nights at friends' or at my family’s.
Sleeping on the train is a bit too risky and uncomfortable.
Apart from that,
I do everything on the train that I used to do in my flat.
I write essays, I prepare presentations,
I write articles for my blog.
I look out the window.
And sometimes, when I'm alone, I even sing.
I got the idea after a fight with my landlady.
I didn't want to live in my old flat anymore.
My relationship here in Cologne had just started.
And I thought,
The people in my life are scattered around Germany.
And now I also have a relationship in Cologne.
I'm never in my flat anyways; why do I even need one?
And I realised, I don't need one.
These are two pictures;
the only pictures I've brought today.
I do a lot on the train while travelling.
Usually I shower at the houses of the people who give me shelter
but on hot summer days I've also washed my hair on the train.
That works just fine.
If you have asked yourself
whether you can order a pizza to a train platform?
Yes, that's possible.
You just have to time it correctly,
so that the pizza isn't cold when you arrive.
Maybe you're thinking,
Okay, she's simply an extreme commuter,
just like millions of others.
That's true, and that's why I want to talk about this today.
The topic for today is 'The adventure of identities.'
Think about the places that are important in your life.
Is your birthplace the place you grew up?
Is it the same place
where you got your education, where you have studied?
Is that place the same place where you live now?
And is that the place you work?
Is that the place where your partner lives or works?
Probably not.
Places play a crucial role in our lives nowadays.
In this century, the adventure of identity is also the adventure of traveling.
It's the adventure of living in several places.
We Germans like to define everything.
Everything needs to have a name; it makes things tangible.
At first, I thought,
'There isn't really a word for what I'm doing at the moment.'
You could say I live on the train.
And I do spend a lot of time there, but I don't sleep there.
Hmm.
You could say I'm homeless, and that is true.
But then people think of 'without shelter',
and that's not what I am.
I have people all over Germany who give me shelter.
These are mostly the people in these five places,
but also friends in other cities
whom I sometimes visit, and have a look around their town.
I try to experience Germany as a traveler, too.
These definitions used to make me go a bit crazy.
I didn't know how to introduce myself.
But the other day I found an expression that I had been missing:
'Multi-local';
living in several places.
Personally, I think my project is nothing spectacular;
I started it because it suited my life style.
Mid-August, the media started to become interested in my project.
I've been contacted by, and featured in over 50 countries,
by all kinds of media.
From the Washington Post, to Japanese and Australian TV.
Even the German pharmacy magazine.
(Laughter)
I was very surprised.
It was rather overwhelming.
All I'm doing is carry to extremes what everyone is doing anyways.
We all live multi-local lives.
We live in more than one place.
From 2012 to 2013, I travelled the world.
When I think about it now,
it seems that we have an issue with mobility,
- with the concept of mobility -
the mobility in our own country, which is integrated in our daily lives.
When I was travelling the world,
it was completely normal to do what I am doing now.
I always have my backpack with me, which is why I brought it.
I have everything in there.
That is everything I carry with me, in this part of my life:
my laptop, my headphones,
some clothes, a toothbrush, my diary.
As a foreigner in another country, it is perfectly normal
to not have your own place to live.
It is perfectly normal
to travel simply with a small backpack, or maybe with a suitcase;
that you couchsurf, or sleep at family's or friends',
or in guest-houses, or hotels.
To do the same as a foreigner in Germany is also perfectly normal.
I do that as a German citizen in Germany and everyone freaks out.
(Laughter)
And I get a call from the pharmacy magazine.
(Laughter)
I think that is quite comical.
The media switches between calling me
'traveller', 'nomad', and 'extreme commuter'.
I know, right?
The first two terms are perfectly okay,
I have no issue with them.
But ‘commute’ has very strong negative connotations.
Think about it.
The first thing that comes to mind is the commuter's allowance;
financial compensation for travelling.
If you Google 'commute', you will find lots of newspaper articles and studies.
They say that commuting 'makes you ill'.
It's 'time-consuming and stressful'.
It 'threatens relationships'.
There are various studies on this subject,
and depending on which travel distance you define for 'commuting',
up to 40 million Germans are commuters.
That is half the population, and more than half of German adults.
And that is only those who commute for work.
There are other studies, ones politicians are not interested in,
that try to calculate how many Germans are in long-distance relationships.
It's about eight million people.
So we are all travelling, all the time in some form or another.
People react in mixed ways to my project.
Some like it a lot, and feel inspired.
Others seem to think that I want to attack them;
that I want to challenge their right to a fixed living space.
That's not at all what this is about.
I find it interesting that we seem to have this strong ambivalence,
a very weird ambivalence, in our society.
Mobility, flexibility, availability -
you hear these terms everywhere.
It's what everybody expects of us.
But if you then travel in Germany, in your every-day life,
we see that as a sub-optimal stage of being in-between.
We all then get to hear things such as,
'You are just not ready to settle down.'
'You need to decide on one place.'
I don’t understand why we make it so complicated for ourselves.
It's a strange ambivalence.
These are expectations we cannot meet.
Because the moment we do meet them, we are criticized for doing so.
So much about the topic of mobile phones.
The term 'commute' does injustice to everyone for whom it is used.
And that is not just people like me who are constantly commuting.
We all commute in a way; we are all travelers.
And I don't understand why this ambivalence won't go away.
We are all aware
that social networks such as Facebook connect us virtually.
But here, in the physical world, we pretend nothing has changed.
We behave as if we were born into our little towns of 300 souls,
grew up there, lived there and died there.
And if you look at our laws on finances, taxes, voting;
you will see that these systems are based on the idea
that we never move further away than 30 kilometers from our birthplace,
or the place where we're registered,
the place where we live officially.
A commentator on 'Spiegel Online' accused me of something
that many people who travel a lot get accused of,
whether they do it for their jobs or privately.
In any case, they travel in Germany, where society notices.
I was told I was afraid of commitment, that I couldn't truly commit to anything,
and that I was afraid of moving in with my boyfriend.
(Laughter)
One moment.
I do commit.
I just commit to more than one place.
I am registered as a student in Tübingen.
Cologne isn't only where my boyfriend lives,
but also where I am doing my internship.
And in Bielefeld, I work in a school where I give workshops.
I commit, but I commit to several places.
We Germans like to define things.
The German dictionary defines 'home' as the following:
'Country or place where one was born and/or grew up,
or where one stays continuously and feels at home.'
Where one stays continuously and feels at home.
I feel at home on the train.
I feel at home at my boyfriend's place,
at my mother's, my grandmother's,
at my university, at my friends' in Tübingen.
I feel at home in multiple places.
The dictionary does not list a plural form of 'home',
but in reality, this plural has existed for a long time now, hasn't it?
Please, don't get me wrong.
I do not want you all to leave your flats for good,
and buy a train card.
In that case, I would have to talk with the German train service
about getting paid for the advertising I do for them.
By the way, because people have mentioned the German train services twice today;
there is a lot that doesn't work, but also a lot that does.
I would like you to become aware
that it is normal to live a life in several places at once.
That is part of our identity, these places are part of our identity.
Think of all the places that are part of your life.
With one of these places missing, your life wouldn't be your life, would it?
You wouldn't be you.
Jean Paul said,
'Only traveling is life, just as life is traveling.'
We all travel anyways.
We all travel in some way.
When do we want to start living consciously while doing so,
and not being constantly ashamed of 'not being anywhere',
and of allegedly being too scared of arriving anywhere?
Thank you.
(Applause)