SPCC A Casa Amarela

Kat and Shaun (CA) stayed with us about a month ago. i just found her account of the trip, including this little bit about their stay here:

The next day we hitched again waiting for about an hour we decided to go further up the highway where we discovered the turn off for the highway leading directly into Lisbon , we were hitching from the wrong spot that entire time, Ten minute wait and we were picked up by a trucker from Brazil who would drop us off in Lisbon.Communication was difficult so it mainly happened through drawing pictures.He was a very sweet man though , giving us water and food.He couldn't drop us off directly inside Lisbon so he left us at a train station where he forced us to take money he offered us because he felt bad that he couldn't take us all the way.Another angel.We took a train and after about 2 hours walking around Lisbon in the blistering heat with giant bags we finally found the place we were to stay .It was one of many abandon buildings on the street a big yellow building with graffiti, It was the squat.

The place was six floors with Anarchy designs everywhere and some really cool punks that lived there as well as their dogs.They have great plans for the place and it seemed when they looked at it they already saw what it will one day be.They planned to make a few bars , a huge garden on the roof , a lecture room , a giant free shop and generally a very cultural place where everyone can live together and build something truly amazing.We spent a few days there , eating great food in great company , talking about nomad bases and how to make everything work, playing with puppies ,drinking wine and jam sessions that lasted hours, laughing, sleeping on the roof and swimming, and even talking about having the hitch gathering there, the only issue was that they didn't really want any legal problems if there were that many people.The place has everything it needs to be amazing even a private swimming pool up the street! The city center of Lisbon was beautiful , every building was a work of art , the churches were beautiful and also cool on those 40 degree days , old street cars with children hanging off the sides, we ran into a parade going down the street loud drums and music people dressed in beautiful colourful costumes, some as monsters who were scaring people in the crowd, a man with a scary mask and a big hairy costume grabbed me from the crowd and gave Shaun a thumbs up , whatever that means.A really neat thing to see though .The only thing about Lisbon is if your a vegetarian and want to eat out , you really have no choices because EVERYTHING is meat .Our last day at the squat as we were leaving we were saying our next stop was Sines , they asked if we had anywhere to stay and we didn't , so Cervario (not sure if that's how its spelt) A Brazilian punk gave us a phone number of an old women he stayed with there , he called and asked her if it was OK and she said of course.He said he thought she won the lottery because she lives alone in a big house over looking the ocean with four floors.

http://casarobino.org/2010/06/living-and-dieing-portugalspain

again, more on nomad bases here: http://nomadbase.org/