Notorious

Thanks to a crash course in Russian, I know how to read the Cyrillic alphabet. There are a lot of cognates (words that are pronounced basically the same and have the same meaning) between English and Russian -- words like pizza, diplomat, coffee and taxi. So, when I arrived in Kyiv, I could actually read some signs and felt like I could get the context of things with the help of these cognates. My first week here, I walked by a large sign that read "Notorious." It was a cool looking sign and rather large on the side of a building located on a rather bustling street. Maybe because of the Kyiv restaurant chain Mafia, I assumed that this place was also a restaurant. Also, I just kind of like the name Notorious for an eatery. I didn't think much of it until time passed and I saw signs everywhere reading notorious. It's really weird. There are a lot of them, and many on the same street. Finally, I asked someone and they unlocked the mystery. These signs are advertising notaries. I guess that makes sense too.