England as a class Society.

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Day 1
After a 10 hour busride full of happy singing, we finally arrived in Oxford. We barely fit into the train that blasted us and the bus through the Chunnel. From what I’ve heard, Oxford supposedly is one of the best places to study. We’ve come here to find out.
The whole group went to the Mitre. There we had, for some of us the first, fish and chips. The desert was delicious even though Daniel Gibb wasn’t happy about desert as he scolded personnel at the mitre not once, but twice about the missing ice cream with the pie.
Afterward, some others and me decided to head into the ‘euro bar’, in celebration of Lynn’s birthday.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />



Day 2
After our English baked beans, scrambled eggs, tomato, toast, sausages and bacon by a true Indian chef we were ready for our guided tour. We started our tour at Christchurch college. Famous for its dining hall in which the students still, with all formalities intact, have dinner. chances of getting into Oxford college are 1 in 6 for all applicants. This fact in and on itself makes studying in Oxford a prestigious thing.
One unique approach of the Christchurch college really stood out to me. After a student at Oxford has written a piece on whichever subject, they have to sit down with their professor and discuss and defend their writing. This challenges the student and the master to think critically about every aspect of their work and their checking. I really like this, literally ‘’reasonable’’ approach. Christchurch’s ground is divided in 4 quadrants. This is standard for all colleges. This way of building is reminiscent of the way Romans built.
After the tour, some of us went book shopping at Blackwell’s right across the street from the impressive limestone buildings(the buildings were built with several different types of limestone from different parts of the country, deductible from colour).
In the evening we started gathering in front of the Oxford Playhouse to watch the pantomime. But beware! We weren’t alone. Many schoolchildren were there to liven up the place, and boy did they. After about 25 minutes of sitting inside listening to hysterical kids chatting and, occasionally, clapping and chanting to the music, the show started. To point out the obvious English aspect of the pantomime… every child at the play had their own school uniform. The typical puns and humor throughout the show reminded me of shows like fawlty towers or ‘allo ‘allo. The fun thing about the show was the active participation we had to do. The crowd was part of the show.
After the pantomime people of our group scattered out in several militia’s, ready to conquer the nightlife in Oxford.







Day 3



morning – oxford castle – shelter
In the morning, after another stomach sickening breakfast, our group decided to visit Oxford Castle. After some chitchat we decided a full tour would be too expensive, so instead we chose to climb up the shell keep on top of the motte, which had a secret passageway to a well inside the motte. We also had an interesting approach towards figuting out England as a class society. The question is how much it is still present today.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of homeless people in Oxford. I counted at least 10 on our way to The Mitre. So after visiting the motte, we decided to talk to batman. A guy was selling items for a good cause, similar to the make a wish foundation. We asked him if there had been a rise in homelessness in Oxford and England in general. He answered yes, there had been a dramatic increase. He believed the fact the Tories took charge again last election, and their eviction policy is key to the drastic rise in homelessness. In order to get some confirmation to this story, we dropped by the homeless shelter to get some accurate data. There are at least 160 people coming into the shelter regularly. While only a 4 years ago, that figure was about half the amount. In order to get some verifiable data, we got an email address of one of the people working for the city council of oxford, but alas, the person did not respond to my emails requesting further information.



Our conclusion remains however: Yes, the class society is still very much present. Oxford is home to many wealthy people, epitomized by the Marlborough family, and the less fortunate represented by the poor.
From what I’ve experienced and learned, class society is returning slowly but surely since the industrial revolution. Maybe it never really disappeared, it was just less of a difference in wealth during the 20^th century.







In the afternoon, we had to round up and meet at the bus to go and visit Blenheim Palace. We had a wonderful tour, saw a lot of expensive stuff. In all honesty, I couldn’t care less the family had giant wall-sized rugs made in France. These rugs were made of 10000 silk stitching per square inch and took several months to make. My negative attitude towards the palace is not because I hate beautiful things, it all seemed too excessive for my taste.



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After a short drive with the bus we arrived at Blenheim Palace, and even though the weather was typicially British, meaning gray, the first look at the Palace, in that beautiful landscape with the lake in front, was absolutely stunning. We were all divided in groups and every group had a tourguide assigned to them. Our tourguide was also typicially British, a little old man with a lovely Oxford accent.



Day 4

After a short nights’ sleep, it was time for all of us to pack our belongings and head to the bus. Unfortunately, a few kilometers before Belgium, we ended up in a giant traffic jam holding up our journey progress for a total of 4 hours.

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