During the recent national elections in Italy, Tobias Jones, the author of The Dark Heart of Italy, wrote that: "Italian politics are a game of musical chairs where no one ever loses their seat." Jones pointed out that: "...at the end of the 19th century, trasformismo was a term coined to describe the ability of Italian politicians to swap parties and coalitions and ideologies, just as long as they stayed in parliament and, preferably, in power. It evoked an image of parliamentary musical chairs in which no chair was ever removed. People might change seats, but they always had una poltrona (an armchair)."

Jones summarized by declaring: "The consequences for the country are fairly tragic. Political discourse is rarely about politica, it's almost always about partitica, party politics. Political discussion [in Italy] is not about monetary or foreign policy, it is about which little party is going to break away, or flow into another, or redesign its emblem, or leave the coalition."

Sadly, it seems that the garbage crisis in Napoli doesn't have a seat in this game.

Sometimes it takes awhile to understand wordplay. Case in point is the independent airline Air One, based in Rome, Italy. The official name is pronounced as in English. But look at the company's avian logo splashed on the rudder. It's a bird, and not just any bird, but a heron, which in Italian is spelled "airone"—hence the double meaning.

Interestingly enough, the company, which originated in Pescara in 1983 as a flying school and also provided air-taxi services, was then known as Aliadriatica. In Italian, the word ali, of course, means wings. The word is a clue also to the derivation of the name of the flag carrier airline of Italy, Alitalia. It's an Italian portmanteau of the words ali (wings) and Italia (Italy).