In Germany, kids can spend a year in a monastery after leaving school

Peter (right) and Father Bohl, who oversees life at the monastery, sit together and talk about the voluntary year and what it means to the monks. Photos: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa

Peter Roberg, 18, kneels down in a graveyard overshadowed by the baroque monastery church on the Frauenberg hill in Fulda, central Germany.

He takes a paintbrush and freshens up the inscription on a gravestone in the monastery cemetery with some white paint.