Stories from the Romanian Sport

The Way to Montevideo (II)

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Florin Orban, 24.04.2020, 13:45

Nearly 90 years ago, on June 19th
1930, Romania’s football side went to Genoa in Italy to board ocean
liner Conte Verde bound for Montevideo. The Romanian delegation had
traveled from Bucharest by train and we referred to their journey in
the first part of this mini-series. So, our footballers now set out
to South America on board of a very luxurious liner, which Romanian
forward Rudi Wetzer described in his diary as a ‘Palace on Water’.

Conte
Verde was the biggest liner of that time and the trip was something
new for most of the Romanian athletes, who were impressed by this
luxurious vessel. The exquisite travel conditions didn’t make up
for our athletes’ sea sickness though, but they shortly managed to
find an antidote to it, the food served on that liner. We are
being offered some fabulous dishes here and there is a lot of
food available. We have 10, 20, 30 courses to choose from. Fruits,
oranges, lemons and grapefruits, a billion vitamins, wrote
Wetzer in his diary.

Footballers
from France and Belgium had also boarded the ship and athletes were
training on an almost daily basis, in the gym, the swimming pool,
even playing ball on the bridge. After these intense training
sessions, things got more relaxed. On June 25th, after the
ship had passed the Equator, a party was organised on board.

Quoting
again from Rudi Wetzer’s diary: ‘Our boys aren’t bad dancers
at all, although we are nearing the continent of rumba and tango. At
the Equator Ball, Cupid made some victims among the members of our
team. I believe we are in for another training session down there
in the hold.

The
first day of July came with bad weather and rain. It was like
November weather and the Romanians learnt the hard way that in the
southern hemisphere seasons are opposite. But that didn’t diminish
their enthusiasm though.

On
July 2nd, the ship moored in Montevideo, where the teams
were given a warm welcome by thousands of people and gun salutes.
Copa del Mundo, which was dominating the city, commenced on July 13th
and Romania played their first game the next day. Stay tuned for more
on this fabulous story in our next edition of our mini-series ‘Stories
from the Romanian sport’.