Where the hell is the drama? Where are they? black jeeps, parallel lists, boys in black? Even if someone curses someone's mother, the desire will pass me by. There is not even the famous spray to spray on the right index finger to prevent double voting.
My first voting experience in Germany, in the local elections in the city of Bonn, was therefore traumatic. Because it was boring.
And because I wonder how it is possible for everything to pass so calmly, quickly and easily, and yes, an hour or two after the closing of the polling station, I can see exactly how the vote was cast.
Voting in the canteen
By the way, as a guest worker claims, for years I did not want German citizenship because it meant renouncing Serbian citizenship. I will always remember the last government of the social democrat Olaf Scholz for the fact that it finally allowed dual citizenship to everyone who has been working properly in Germany for at least five years and paying taxes.
This week (September 14) there were local elections across the largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The invitation arrives regularly a few weeks before, you can vote by letter or in person.
My polling station 115 in Kessenih, it's quiet, in a solid neighborhood. It corresponds to Belgrade's Banovo brd, for example. The vote is taken at the elementary school where my younger daughter goes, in the canteen.
On the linoleum floor, tables, a few mostly elderly fellow citizens distribute ballots. In Germany, there is no complicated assembly of election committees where each party delegates people as if going to war so that they control each other. Elections are conducted by volunteers who receive a small daily allowance to support themselves.
Four ballots of different colors - because you are voting for the mayor, the city assembly, the municipal assembly and also for the integration council. All the tickets are put in one box and bye.
And speeding cops
Then the family went to the fair on Piceno, it's across the river, one of the biggest fairs in the world, but that's for another story.
Polling stations are closed at 18:00. At 18:55, the results from my polling station for the mayoral election were published on the city's official website. At 19:30 they are for the town assembly. At 20:04 for the city municipality.
And so from the whole city. And that's all.
Where is the drama, I wonder! How do the neighbors, grandparents, know how to count the votes so quickly and enter them where they should so that the whole world can see the result? Why doesn't the president show up, or even the mayor to say the results?
By the way, the green mayor Katja Derner and her challenger from the Christian Democrats, who won the first round with close to 40 percent, are going to the second round. The alternative for Germany in Bonn has barely five percent of support. This is a well-to-do city.
In my neighborhood, the Greens dominate. Our local councilor boasted that they had introduced a 30-per-hour speed limit in several streets and had put in lying-down police officers. His face was on the posters, not the face of the mayor or the head of the party.
It's all strange somehow. I guess there will be at least a little fuss in the second round in two weeks.
