Signs

19 June 2006
Some of the signs that you are living in a city of more than one million people!

Naples: they empty the rubbish skips on the streets every night
Brisbane: household rubbish is collected once a week, recyclables once a fortnight (if you remember to put your bin out)

Naples: parking is bumper to bumper and ingenuity is expected
Brisbane: please park only within the allocated spaces.

Naples: twenty four hour outlets for the essentials include curb side cigarette vending machines, 24 hour dvd/video stores (like an ATM), all nite coffee and fresh croissants & self service fuel with automated machine for payment.
Brisbane: instant coffee, soggy sausage rolls and over priced cigarettes available from 7-11 stores in every suburb.

Naples: scooters and motorbikes are common place, often ridden by children or transporting a family of four.
Brisbane: Still notice someone riding a scooter, and drivers still fail to be aware of motorbikes.

Naples: Your public transport options include: ANM bus (inner city) – regular, ANM bus (local community) – small and narrow (to fit the small, narrow alleyways), CTP bus (city to outer suburbs), the Metro (construction to be finished by 2011), train, Funicolare (like a cable car, you know the song "Funicoli, funicola, funicoli, funicolaaaa"), ferries, Circumvesuviana train (literally circles the volcano) and trams.
Brisbane: Your public transport options include bus (possibly banana, and engineering marvel), trains, City cats and slow ferries.

Naples: Take a number at the post office and pasticceria (pastry shop).
Brisbane: take a number at government offices.

Naples: Traffic lights flash amber on Sundays to stop people running red lights.
Brisbane: Traffic lights flash amber after an electrical storm causes severe damage or blackout.

Naples: The central government/business district was built in the 1980’s after reclaiming a whole residential suburb.
Brisbane: Brisbane’s CBD is still being constructed, some 150 years after they began.

Naples: The Greeks arrived about 4500 years ago and left a lot behind.
Brisbane: The Greeks arrived about 100 years ago and are just now settling in.

Naples has three castles and two palaces.
Brisbane, at last count, has no castles and zero palaces.