On September 27, 2009, the Federal Republic of Germany will vote for their 17th "Bundestag", i.e., its federal parliament. Due to my absence on the actual election day, I went to the ballot today already for early voting. Here is proof:
The staff were very helpful and interestingly, there were actually a lot of people asking for absentee ballots.
Another observation struck me as odd while reading the ballot: Of all people, the direct candidate of one of the nationalist parties*) is a "Fremdsprachensekretärin", or certified multi-lingual secretary. Yup, a foreign-language secretary by day, moonlighting as a xenophobe. Life's ironic.
*) whom I didn't vote for, just in case that was unobvious.