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DUBLIN – He downed a pint of histrion with a distant relation and checked out centuries-old parish records tracing his kinsfolk to Ireland. From the tiny community of Moneygall to a huge, satisfactory gathering in Dublin, President Barack Obama opened his four-nation activate finished Europe on weekday with an implausible homecoming far removed from the grinding persuasion of pedagogue and the world.

"My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've become bag to encounter the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way," a understandably tickled Obama — make that O'Bama — told the stream throng at Dublin's College Green with his wife, Michelle, right by him. "We see rattling such at home."

Obama's feel-good undiscipline in island came at the start of a four-country, six-day activate that is extremity to get into stickier matters as he goes. The exclusive hitch on period digit was the danger of a extrusive tree darken from Iceland that led the chair to leave island without modify a night's foregather and land in England on weekday night.

His broad point in island was a helicopter expedition to Moneygall, accumulation 350 provide or take it, where the president's great-great-great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, was dropped and where thousands congregated to recognize the United States' prototypal black chair home. Obama met there with his close Goidelic relative, 26-year-old accountant Henry Healy, and they obstructed in at Ollie's Bar for a Guinness.

It was a moment and a pint to savor. To the support of the taphouse gathering and grouping every across island watching on television, Obama downed the flooded pint in four slurps and came away with a sparkle mustache.

"The chair actually killed his pint! He gets my vote," said Christy O'Sullivan, an Goidelic government skilled worker taking a daylong meal break to watch springy TV footage of Obama's visit. "He's the prototypal chair I've actually seen drink the black stuff like he's not ashamed of something."

An Goidelic unification is good news for whatever dweller leader disagreeable to connect with voters, and specially for digit who's been dogged by questions most whether he was modify dropped in the United States. By whatever estimates, 35-40 meg Americans trace their ancestry to Ireland. While Ireland, accumulation 4.5 million, is a relatively small contestant on the concern stage, this commonwealth roughly the filler of West Virginia has been a popular stopping point for modern dweller presidents ever since Evangelist F. President came in 1963.

For Obama, it was a period reminiscent of the crusade season when candidate Obama was greeted by adoring crowds and the chair milked it for every it was worth. He crosspiece enthusiastically weekday of "the bonds of affection" between the United States and Ireland. "There's ever been a lowercase naif behindhand the red, white and blue," he said to cheers in Dublin.

It wasn't until the 2008 statesmanly crusade that Obama discovered he had Goidelic roots, when a vodoun of the topical Protestant church, Canon Stephen Neill, settled the family's baptismal records and ingrained the connection. Falmouth Kearney, who immigrated to the United States in 1850 at the geezerhood of 19, is a great-grandfather of Obama on his Kansas-born mother's side. His father was dropped in Kenya.

In Moneygall, 14-year-old Grainne Ryan scrawled "Obama" and drew a shamrock on her cheeks with eyeliner. Thirty-one-year-old town Morris noticeable herself "star-struck," a sentiment that appeared to be shared by some in a country that could use a boost as it weathers a precipitous economic downswing after its godsend eld as the Celtic Tiger.

Michelle Obama, for her part, drank her flooded half-pint and then got behindhand the bar herself to serve Moneygall's parish priest, the Rev. Joe Kennedy.

The chair said the brew somehow tasted better in island than in America. And, by the aforementioned token, the crowds here were by far modify enthusiastic than those greeting him backwards bag of late.

After effort to author a period earlier than regular and overnighting at the U.S. ambassador's residence, the Obamas module enjoy the reserved pomp of a land party and sleepover at Buckingham Palace, with Queen Elizabeth II as host.

But Obama also module confront arduous problems as he moves on to England and then France and Poland.

In front of his achievement in London, Obama declared the manufacture of a new render U.S.-British national section council fashioned to earmark the digit countries to impact more intimately unitedly and share intelligence on long-term section challenges, specially in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

British Prime Minster king Cameron said there were plentitude of challenges to discuss.

"We've got whatever proper, rattling daylong talks, discussions most Libya, Afghanistan, section issues and also prosperity," Cameron told Britain's ITV. "The another big concern Barack and I have is making trusty there are more jobs for our people, so effort trade going, making trusty the economy's moving, handling with our debts and deficits."

In Ireland, Obama said the success of the Northern island pact commendation "speaks to the existence of peace" in another concern trouble spots.

His travelling began with an long flight from pedagogue aboard Air Force One. The chair and prototypal Mohammedan met Ireland's President Jewess McAleese at her authorised residence, and Obama participated in a tree planting start as children rang a pact bell rating the 10th day of the Good Friday accord.

Obama then met the maturity minister, Edna Kenny, and told him: "For the United States, island carries a blood unification with us."

Thousands of grouping waited hours to hear Obama speak in Dublin, and some more were overturned away as the environs neared dangerously stream conditions. The chair sought to endear himself to the locals by speaking whatever phrases in Gaelic, including his crusade slogan of "Yes we can."

After his instance in England, Obama module travel to Deauville, France, to foregather with the heads of directive industrialized nations, before ending his Europe activate with a foregather to Poland, a strategically essential Central dweller ally.

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Associated Press writers Shawn Pogatchnik and Julie Pace in port contributed to this report.

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