Apartment and Commune to Work

 With the apartment we had cleaning shifts every weekend. It would shift between all the tenants. The common areas, the two bathrooms and the kitchen were to be cleaned. We had two cats in the flat, Uma and Iggy who were to be fed wet food in the morning and the night. There was a chart on the fridge door that would indicate if we had fed the cats or no. That was a system developed by the tenants because the cats would demand food from a tenant even if another had given them food earlier.

In the apartment we had a good open kitchen with a dishwasher and washing machine. We had two bathrooms shared, with one of them having a shower. The one with the shower was considered to be used for "bigger ones" and the smaller bathroom with no working lock for smaller ones. 

The rent for my room was 550€ with a deposit of 550€. The room was the biggest one in the apartment and the price was pretty good considering the location and the amenities. Also as my stay was to be limited to only two months, the costs were very reasonable. With Coach Will being one of the tenants, fitting in was very easy.

Will taught me how to get from the apartment in Giesing to the facilities in Haar and back. There was a few options of getting there. Generally I would walk to the U-bahn metro station about 5 minutes away, ride the metro for about 10 minutes to Trudering and from there take the S-train to Haar. Overall the trip would take 35 minutes. Coming back late in the evening the best way to get home was to take the take the S-train towards the city for a little while longer to the Ostbahnhof (East station) and from there hurry to a bus that would take me right next to the apartment. 

I bought a monthly public transit ticket that included as much travel inside Haar and Munich after 9 in the morning as I wanted. The ticket was 55€ which was not too bad considering I would take multiple different transports at least two times a day. 

The Academy

The academy during the winter months consisted of practices in the weight room and indoor baseball practices in two different gyms. When the weather would suffice, we would have some outdoor baseball activities, like long toss and defense-work on the running track of a stadium.

There were two groups of kids to coach: The Young Guns which consisted of about 20 kids of the age of 10-14 and The Old Boys, consisting of about 10 kids between the ages of 14 to 18. 

With the introduction it was a lot of showing how things worked around. What the scheduling was with different groups and where the practices would be held. I needed to know what equipment we would need in any given practice and there was a lot to choose from. They also showed me and talked about the coaching ideas and philosophies they had on coaching baseball and a lot of the areas of baseball, like their hitting and throwing philosophies and how to work those into practices. One thing was to learn how to setup the batting cage indoors in the gym.

It was quite easy to fit in to the baseball community in Haar in terms of language, as two of the coaches were Canadian and some of the players from other english speaking countries like USA and the rest knew how to speak english really well. So as the game of baseball is english and the coaches from english speaking countries, english was used as the primary language of communication. 

Preparing for the Trip

    Breakfast at the Helsinki Airport             On my way to Munich

Planning for the trip had to be done fairly quickly as I was able to get the internship position shortly before Christmas and the intership would start at the beginning of February. Fortunately we managed to write all the contracts really quickly and that is a huge thank you to the teachers at my school as well as the people at the Baseball Academy. 

I was able to get financial support from the Erasmus program. The Erasmus program is the EU's program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. Also from The Social Insurance Institution (Kela) I managed to get more student allowance for studies abroad and extra support for accommodation.

The Academy informed me to get straight to work on finding a place to stay as it was difficult to find available accommodation in Munich. Luckily a couple weeks before the trip my Work Instructor Will informed me of a room available in the same apartment he was living in. The room was available to me for Februay and March so I took the room. As I confirmed the exact dates of my trip I booked my flights.

Internship in Munich

My name is Toivo Aaltonen and I'm a student at Kisakallio Sports Institute, in Lohja Finland. I'm currently a second-year student in a three-year study for Vocational Qualification in Sports Instruction. Currently I'm studying for the competence area of Coaching and Sports Club Activities and as a part of that will be participating in a two-month internship period in Munich, Germany with the Munich-Haar Disciples Baseball Academy.  http://verein.disciples.de/