Washington diary: Inaugural fever

Washington DC, a city of just over one million inhabitants, may play host to a visiting crowd of three million.

Trains have been booked solid for months.

You cannot find a hotel room as far away as Baltimore or Richmond, and enterprising citizens of the District are pitching tents and renting their homes for astronomical sums.

For one week the recession - or is it now a depression? - will be banished from this town like an evil spirit.

Bars will stay open until 4am on the day after inauguration night.

Barack Obama has risen to the mounting challenge of crisis and expectation by flexing his muscles

Hollywood stars who normally shun the federal capital like a leper colony will descend en masse.

Reagan airport will become a parking lot for executive jets. And at one night club they have taken the Obama worship to new levels by offering the "Dream" cocktail, a sickly concoction of rum, caramel and cinnamon.

The economy continues to tank, Gaza continues to burn and Eastern Europe continues to shiver without Russian gas but the world, it seems, does not begrudge Washington its festivities, just as the world wishes George Bush a speedy transition to retirement amid the tumbleweed of Texas.


Credits: BBC