I haven't written anything in a while, but here is a large chunk of information for you to digest.

One of the more significant events taking place in Germany (no, I’m not talking about Oktoberfest) is the election.  I find this extremely interesting, especially comparing this election to the US presidential election. Germany is a parliamentary democracy, so the chancellor is not directly elected.  How it basically works, is that people vote for a party* and (more or less) the percent of the vote that the party received is the percent of the Bundestag that they will occupy. So, if the CDU gets 30% of the votes, then it will get 179 seats (30%) in the Bundestag. If I’m not mistaken, a party must receive 5% or more in order to get a seat. This prevents a extremely fractured parliament (such as in Italy). After the whole seat thing is figured out, the representatives in the Bundestag vote for a chancellor. In order to be voted chancellor, one must receive more than 50% of the votes. This is somewhat problematic, as no party receives 50%. Thus, coalitions are born. This really makes things interesting. There is a lot of talk about who will join up with together. This alone is enough to give some people the reason to vote for a different party. Obviously the more conservative parties and the more liberal parties want to form their own coalitions. 

Conservative coalition= black/yellow (CDU/CSU and FDP) Liberal coalition= red/yellow/green-also known as the Stoplight coalition (SPD, Linke, and die Grüne). There is also the Jamaica Coalition= black/green/yellow (CDU/CSU, Grüne, and FDP)

The political issues here are different.  The environment and job-creation seem to be the big ones.  Nuclear power is way more controversial here and is a significant factor in the election. The “war” in Afghanistan is also an issue, but really only fringe parties support complete withdrawal of the Bundeswehr (who are there to train police and protect the training facilities).  I really suggest doing this online questionnaire put together by the BPB (the governmental political education service). It’s called the wahl-o-mat, and in the end gives you which parties you most closely align with. There is also an English version.

Wahl-o-mat link

In contrast to the US, the campaigning season is remarkably short. It began after the local elections (on 27. August) and ends this Sunday. National elections are always on a Sunday, leaving no excuses as to why you couldn’t vote.

*there are twenty many parties in Germany, however only six are noteworthy. The oldest party is the SPD, which is center left. Second oldest is the CDU/CSU (it is only the CSU in Bayern), as the Christian Democrats they are center right.  The third oldest party is the FDP, which is more or less the libertarian party but European style. Die Grüne is the party that is very pro-environment and is probably a little bit further left than the SPD. Die Linke (literally, the left) is the party that rose from the DDR (East Germany). They are socialists. These five parties are the only ones which will/do receive enough votes to play a role on the federal level. The sixth noteworthy party is the NPD (National Partei Deutschland). This is the right-extremist party (read Nazi party). Their commercials call for the preservation of the German language and the German family. Their posters have a picture of a mosque with an X going through it. On this topic, I find it extremely interesting how the youth here are extremely anti-Nazi. So much so, that these posters from the NPD must be hung up really high, otherwise the youth rip them down. The NPD does find a significant level of support in the east. The DDR left a part of the country without infrastructure or a good economy. Those who could leave did.  What is left is a lot of old people and a lot of unemployed, single, not-necessarily-educated, and young men (sounds like the perfect climate for fascism). From what I’ve been told, a lot of the women leave as soon as they can.