Impressions from the polling station: “The cat nibbled on it”

When the alarm goes off at 6:30 on Sunday morning, the volunteer work loses its shine. It is no consolation that as an election worker you share the fate of 675,000 people in Germany who drag themselves out of bed at a similarly early hour to get to the polling stations on time at 8 a.m. The first voters are ready in Frankfurt's Nordend district: a bearded man in his mid-thirties with a baseball cap, a punctual pensioner and a young woman, barely over 20.