Oxford (the real old one)

First visit today, in tandem with Taiyo. Beautiful place, and the history, literature, and learning of the place comes up through the cobblestones.

But I have a little bit of the same reaction, walking past Christchurch Cathedral and Balliol College, that I had the first time I visited the Vatican: yeah, they're wonderful places, stuffed to bursting with erudition and artistic beauty and a sense of tradition--and neither one of them would have existed if they hadn't been funded by feudalism, colonialism, and empire.

I walk the streets of both places, and I can't help but be conscious of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people whose work made them both possible, but who never enjoyed their benefits.

Still an old Chartist/Wobbly/anarchist at heart, I reckon.