Liberty Square, or "Little Square of Green Trees," regularly hosted fairs. The main characters on the fairgrounds square were the owners of the merry-go-rounds, those ancient two-story lighted rides made of painted wood depicting Rococo scenes of pastoral love, crowned with a huge golden tiara and still driven at the time by the draught animals-mules, donkeys or hundred-year-old ponies, ready for slaughter at the end of the season. Gymnasts, acrobats, constantly unemployed gypsies looking for temporary employment, skinny fortune-tellers with heads decorated with turbans of colorful fabrics, gypsy clairvoyants looking for a happy and willing victim bustled among the fair stalls. We eagerly awaited the arrival of the traveling merchants who camped in the nearby streets with their freshly painted wooden caravans pulled by tired horses. On the square they erected their animal-drawn carousels, their airplane-shaped iron swings, their shooting ranges, their candy shacks adorned with concave and convex mirrors, their open-air stalls from which would soon emanate the burnt grease smell of gaufres, or the more penetrating smell of garlic sausages covered with mustard.