Living Situations

My time in Austria contained a number of great experiences I loved, and a similar number of shitty situations that were terrible due to our ass of a club president. One of those things happened to be my living situation. This was a club I wanted to be a part of for the entire winter, and had to be pushy for them to just write up a contract to give me, even though they verbally expressed they intended to sign me. One piece of the contract they were not able to sort out was the living situation. They had expressly stated that finding an apartment for me and the other import to share would be no issue, but months passed and nothing came about. We came to agree that if they couldn’t find a place for me to live by March 1st, I was free to find another club. This agreement was trash though, because no one finds a club after March 1st.

My first experience playing overseas was in Barcelona. I was a young buck at the time. 22 years old, fresh out of college. I was never able to study abroad (baseball made that impossible) so this was also my first time living in another country. Though I was nervous, I found comfort in that I was going to be greeted by the club and its community, and they would help me throughout this ‘big’ transition. The club had set me up with a relatively inexpensive living situation. I would rent a room in an apartment walking distance to the baseball field. This apartment belonged to a mother of two young teenagers, one of which played for the club’s cadets (kids team). Another american player had previously lived there as well. Needless to say, the family was involved within the baseball community (you meet a lot of these, they’re everywhere).