MONEYGALL, Ireland - since the US President announced, Saint Patrick's day, would visit his ancestral home of the Irish, the village of Moneygall has suffered from an incurable case of Obamania.
This road hamlet of two pubs, three shops and just 350 inhabitants repainted each House with each lamp and renamed apparently all products visit on Monday by President Barack Obama. Locals have stood in line for hours to receive one of the 3 000 tickets that their most famous son of Moneygall meet.
"We have all been taken in this dream." "Nothing in the village seems real," said Henry Healy, an accountant of 26 years for a plumbing company who discovered four years ago he was one of the closest Irish relatives of the Obama. "I was repeating what I say to the President for months in my head.". I cannot really believe that it will happen. ?
As he spoke, the powerful rotors of two military helicopters U.S. admits in the distance, and a deliveryman arrived with another truck of fruitbread Irish spicy called brack - renamed "Of Brack Barack" this month in through the Ireland and bearing a portrait of the caricature of President.
Healy received the note No. 0001 since it is an eighth cousin to Obama, the closest blood relative still alive in Moneygall. In fact, he lives next to the pub to adorned with American flag Obama is expected to visit.
American genealogists and the Irish have detected several other distant cousins Irish of Obama living in Ireland and in England, including Dick Benn and tone Donovan, whose families live in the County of Tipperary border and have cultivated the Earth even centuries of 2 1 / 2.
They were all descendants of Falmouth Kearney, one of the grandfathers of great-back-back of the Obama side of his mother from Kansas. Kearney, Shoemaker, emigrated from Ireland to United States in 1850, at age 19, to the Great Famine.
Each known Irish parent should be standing on the main street of the Moneygall when Obama begins a six-day trip, four-nation Europe.
At the national level, Ireland barely had time to record the arrival of the Obama. The country has just organized a tour of high security of Queen Elizabeth II, the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland, after its independence from Great Britain 1919-21 war. His triumphal tour of four days in question carefully choreographed acts of reconciliation.
No such drama expected Obama. Ireland has always offered warmly welcomed the Presidents of the United States since John f. Kennedy became the first to visit in 1963. More than 40 million Americans have Irish ancestors. The two countries today enjoy exceptional links of culture and trade, a vital relationship for the Ireland because of his battle current to avoid national bankruptcy.
Obama Monday event will be a speech in the open air at the entrance of Trinity College in Dublin, the capital who spent much of the last week of a lock of security for the Queen.
A crowd of non-ticket is encouraged to gather in the Street outside Trinity several hours advance, attracted in part by rumors that an array of Irish bands, actors and other celebrities will provide a warm-up Act.
While Obama is widely admired in Ireland, he has not anything close to the fan base built by Bill Clinton, who made the recovery of North Ireland a priority and visited both parts of the Ireland three times from 1995 to 2000.
But Moneygall officials were applauded for Obama since primary for Iowa in the hope that its entry in the White House would put village of long-bypassed - side of the road from Dublin to Limerick, in the southwestern corner of the County of Offaly - on the tourist card.
They held a party all night at Ollie Bar the night Obama won the presidential race of 2008 and immediately began lobbying for a visit. Obama announced that he would during the visit of the feast of Saint Patrick in Washington by newly elected Prime Minister of the Ireland Enda Kenny.
Intelligence in a dark suit and sunglasses officers arrived last month in Moneygall.
Locals have applied 3 500 litres of paint and laid new sidewalks. A village catering painted U.S. and Irish flags on the front of his home and is cooking Obama burgers. Construction workers were hastily built the Obama Cafe. The altar of the Catholic Church has been echoed in red, white and blue bunting.
Guinness last week delivered a specially brewed barrel of stout to pay the time when Obama iterates through the door bar of Ollie, including a bust in bronze by sports, photo of painting-cutting and size of the President.
"It will be the largest pint I will never for," said Ollie Hayes, standing behind the bar of his pub. In recent weeks, it is flooded with tourist bus and journalists and Irish musicians and international scene for free.
"Moneygall has never seen a such Carnival." Early morning, evenings spent. There was many a sore head the morning after the previous night, "Hayes said dancers, singers and drummers Nigerians were preparing to carry out."
The Moneygall favorite artists are brothers Corrigan, a band of Limerick. Their singalong "there was zero as Irish as Barack Obama" became a sensation of the internet in 2008 and crossed several lyrical mutations.
The two brothers sing their latest version, "Welcome Home, President of Barack Obama," to a crowd of noisy pub, standing-room only Saturday evening. An alternative version already aligned to the claims of the Obama re-election campaign: "" it is as Irish as Riverdance, Guinness and Joyce - in 2012 there is only a single choice!""
None of these celebrations would have been possible, but for the protestants of the village Minister, Canon Stephen Neill, who has everything parishioners in the only predominantly Catholic region but which is probably his most popular character.
It was he who, in 2007, has studied through recordings of birth and baptism of the Church of the Templeharry Ireland, 3 miles (5 km) outside of Moneygall and made the fateful discovery of the baptism of Falmouth Kearney.
He had received calls from American genealogist Megan Smolenyak continued the many facets of the background of the Obama. It will also, in Moneygall to meet with the President.
O'Neill concedes there are plenty of people who are more Irish than Obama.
"It is about 5% Irish, adapt. But it is enough, O'Neill said. "They do not say that there is a bit of Irish in all the world".
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Online:
"There is zero as Irish as Barack Obama ' song, http://bit.ly/7WJib5".
Brack of Barack, http://www.patthebaker.com/news.php
Barack in Moneygall T-shirts, http://www.whatsthecraicbarack.bigcartel.com/
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