I’ve learned that “mamka mu” means “Oh Shit!” in Bulgarian. However, I learned this after we spent 4 hours in a restaurant agressively toasting “mamka mu!!” and drinking large quantities of rakia.

I’ve learned that shaking your head means yes and nodding means no in Bulgaria. Fortunately, I was warned before I did my talk.

I’ve learned that when you ask the locals how to say “thank you for the beer” in Bulgarian, they might tell you how to say “my mother is a sheep” or “I have three testicles”, so always get a second opinion.

This is a photo (click to enlarge) taken by Sahil Malik at what was our best night out since we got here. We went to a great restaurant up in the mountains of Sofia, which we got to by taxi. The road turned to cobblestone as the grade increased, and the driver was absolutely booking up this road. Potholes be damned. From left to right are Goksin Bakir (the Golden Boy RD from Turkey), Mire Ivanova and Svetlen Nakov (See Julie Lerman’s Blog later in the week for a video of this crazy Bulgarian Chalga man), and Stephen Forte… all doing the Chalga dance.

The DevReach conference was two days (October 9 and 10, 2006) in Sofia Bulgaria.  I did a talk on RSS, Podcasting, and Syndication, and we also recorded a live .NET Rocks! at the end of the first day. Listen to next week’s show for more stories from Sofia.