The Workshop

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Theres no pics of the place as I found it really, I had already started to paint the woodwork grey with good paint I found in the city in the trash

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You might already know that im not one for paying rent as I see it is a form of slavery and instead I move into houses or anything thats livable that have been empty for many years usually repairing them if they need it.. You can see this short post about how it works.

Its nice to have a nose at how other people are living so I welcome you!

How I found it..

I had decided to go see a squat I had heard about that nobody really knew about and there were rumours that it didnt even exist anymore. Oslo has no places for travellers to stay really and no actual squats designed for this.
I was sleeping on a stage at a punk bar and helping out in the daytime in the voluntary kitchen and concerts at the weekends. It became very boring and I then decided to go hunt for that Squat id heard about, of which I shall not name or give any locations about it because it is literally the last real occupied squat in Oslo and anyway the people like their privacy.
One day around the 22nd of october I got the bus and started to look for the place just from what people had told me it was like, atleast i had the bus stop name to go by. After some time exploring I found a big open space in the forest on the side of the road and there were many caravans and wagons inside. Just the kind of place I was looking for.

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I stood and watched for a couple of minutes and the place was dead quiet, no smoke from chimneys , no movement, not even any dogs around.
Then I saw a guy come out of a van and walk towards a caravan making it the perfect time for me to shout out "Hi!" to him.
He looked shocked to see me and I introduced myself saying that im looking for a place to live over the winter. He said that they dont accept people to live there but we could go atleast go and get a coffee and meet the others as he was going there anyway. We went to a wooden trailer and there I met 2 others a boyfriend and girlfriend, the ones who found the place a couple of years before and just parked up there to repair their van.

They were very skeptical but after a smoke or 2 and a chat we realized that we all had the same impression of Oslo and how the alternative scene is there and they told me they had such bad experiences with people before that they arnt that sociable at all now and keep the place closed which I understood because ive been in their position before in Spain, you open your doors and then people come take everything you have and then leave after some time.

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I stayed in the guest caravan for the few nights that was allowed, and in the days I was searching the area for a possible place to live. There was a red mechanics workshop near to them but it was on the main road and locked up , so I carried on searching but there were only cabins with caved in roofs.
On the last evening that I could stay there I had started to look for a place to put up my big tent in the forest and had ended up coming back to the red place from behind it without knowing and then I saw that there was a small hole cut out with what looked like a chainsaw in the back wall.

I managed to squeeze myself through and lifted my rucksack in with me. This was perfect inside. It was a mechanics workshop and seemed to be empty a long time, and as I hadnt actually broken anything to get in, that meant I could never get in any trouble for living there.
The floor was rotten in the corner of where i went in, and an old heavy sewing machine stood buckling the rotten floor boards which had sank down but that was all that was wrong with the whole place. Heres a pic of when I was repairing it (below right), it was caused because rocks on the outside wood wall and so moisture had collected there and couldnt drain away (below left). And mr butterfly said Hello!

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I left the long room I had entered in and walk through a door and down a few step into the main workshop area. There were no windows at all in the place, one half had an old office and huge work bench, and the other half was were 2 cars could be parked joined by a wide archway and the main door unlocked form the inside.

These pictures I have are after around a week of living there... On the 3rd day I was out getting fire wood, and someone told me that the owner was there clearing it all out. I ran back and went back through the hole in the wall from the forest and went inside through to the main room. There I met 2 men clearing things out that were stored there and I introduced my self. Pointing to the office saying that I was travelling had been staying there some nights already. To my surprise the guy said "stay as long as you need" and left. I realized when they had left that they took my axe that i had spent the last of my money on , and never even got to use!

I had already got to work, and saw that the office would be my best bet to sleep in as it was small and the desk would become my bed. And in the office there were windows the faced the main road so I would atleast have some kind of light. It was freezing cold around 2 degrees but there was no wind and it was fully insulated with around 15cm of rockwool even in the raised floor the office sat on. It looked like a sauna actually finished in nice wood all round. Around the back I had removed the rocks and dug out around the wooden walls, a ton of compost from the leaves that had fallen and been blown there over the years. I took a window from the trash in the city and fitted it and also had to redirect the rain water because that also was causing the floor damage inside. Heres a pic of the back after i put the window in and found a piece of plastic to take the water away from the roof. (below)

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I had managed to get a full gas bottle but had spent all the money I had again on it, costed 100 euro!!!! So I slept in the cold office looking at the gas bottle with no means to make heat from it but I was lucky to have a very good sleeping bag. At this time I was every day stood on a busy street with a huge advert , and got some hours work to get money for the axe and the gas bottle. There was enough already to repair the floor and soon I would move into the long room that once had the small whole in the wall, but now it was a window in my new bedroom. This room was also fully insulated and a nice size. The picture to the left is the best way to get a job if you are unemployed- seriously I did this also in Uk when I realised that the job center was fucking useless. So I now had all my things in the workshop and nice people living around me, I had permission to be there, winter was comming and there was a forest full of wood. The next money I got from wherever it came, was to buy a wood oven. But whilst I had no money and still a good saw, it was time to do a few days of getting wood.

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Alot happened at this place, I was here for 6 months in total so there will be more parts to it..

Hope you enjoyed, and remember anyone can do this!

Check out the adventures I had when I left England and went traveling alone "On a shoe string" with a van!

Part 1- An Escape Pod To A New Life
Part 2-Waves Goodbye
Part 3- Lost In BCN
Part 4- Still In Barceloca
Part 5- Finally Able To Move On
Part 6- Tarragona, Spain