The Happy Blog

Hello and welcome to the Happy Blog!

We are the Happy guides from Happy Strasbourg and we’re Happy to show our Happy articles to our Happy readers on our Happy blog… Is that too much “Happy”? Nope, because we think there is no such thing as too good a mood 😉

More seriously, the Happy Strasbourg team has decided to create a blog. That way we can share some knowledge outside of our guided tours and you can learn something about Strasbourg, even as you remain comfortably settled in your armchair. It will not necessarily replace the mood we give to our tours, but we shall try anyway and let you peek into our way of seeing things, through writing.

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To write down our stories was something that tickled us for a while. Usually, we like to tell you about them live and direct. Yet, we find new ones everyday! And rightly so, because learning about our city, our region and everything else is the basis of our passion. We spend time looking into tiny details about that fact or that building, we spend time reading an encyclopedia. Well, OK, encyclopedias are no common  bedside books, but such atypical stuff makes us so charming, doesn’t it?

On this blog, you will find some history and traditions (mostly Alsatian ones) of course, but also some more entertaining anecdotes, legends, folklore stuff, news, but always in a… Can you guess? That’s right: in a Happy way of course! 😀

And to cook that up, the whole team gets to work: Elise, Gabriel, Gilles, Gustave, Leo, Matthias and Remy. Between us, we call ourselves the “Happies”, a nice team of passionate people. What we love most is to share our stories, so, in the end, to create a blog was the obvious thing to do… We all trod different paths before we got here, but we grew up in our beautiful Alsace and rallied to that passion for culture(s). If you would like to know more about us, go check our descriptions!

We hope you’ll have a good time reading our writings and feel free to comment below them, you can even contact us to ask questions or give us some ideas!

We wish you a good reading.

Happily so,

Elise, Gabriel, Gilles, Gustave, Leo, Matthias, Remy.

The tanners’ ditch

The tanners’ ditch

by | Apr 10, 2019 | ,

Strasbourg has always been a city of canals. Built in the origin between two arms of the Ill river, on an island called nowadays the Great Island, it had many more canals. The successive phases of urban planning along with some changes in their use led to them being displaced, covered or simply to disappear.

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Kléber Square (part 4/4)

Kléber Square (part 4/4)

by | Mar 29, 2019 | ,

This is the continuation and conclusion of our series dedicated to the main square (see previous post). By the end of that last note, we still won’t be done with it entirely. Yet, if I entertain myself by telling you all of it in these pages, how can I hope to arouse enough curiosity in you that you will get up from your couch and come frolic with Happy Strasbourg?

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Kléber Square (part 2/4)

Kléber Square (part 2/4)

by | Feb 20, 2019 | ,

In the previous article (KlĂ©ber Square 1), we have discussed the quite recent transformations of Strasbourg’s main square, then we started digging there, just a few meters deep. I now suggest we keep on going back in time together by delving further into the place’s strata.

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