>Interesting that you have "supper". Do they have a "dinner" in either Serbian or Russian?

We have the words for three regular meals (nouns and verbs derived from them - like "vecherati" means "to have the evening meal"), which are taken in the morning, early in the afternoon and in the evening. The "uzhina" (snack) is optional, could be about halftime between the regular meals.

So "ruchak" (lunch) and "ruchati" (to have lunch) is the midday meal. Since most of the people in Yugoslavia still work 6 to 2 or 7 to 3, they usually have a breakfast at work (anytime between 8 and 11), and have lunch when they return home. Back in 60's-80's, there was a large (state-supported) program of providing the working people some food while they work, and many enterprises introduced (tax free) lunches on the premises. I've seen many of those eateries, and enjoyed dozens of good lunches while visiting my customers. Most of them had their own cooks, or had the ready-made food brought from catering services.

In Hungary, with the fall of communism, they've switched to 9 to 5 working hours, and I've seen a lot of restaurants offering standard menus, or the in-house canteens (just like we had) offering lunches to anyone who'd come. The best places I remember were the pedagogy academy (where we'd eat with the kids from the attached elementary school), and the Police Cultural Home :). The trouble with the latter was that you had to pay in advance for the dates when you wanted to eat there, so it took some planning.

One thing that confused the hell out of me was the distinction between "lunch", "dinner" and "supper" in English. The only digestable (pardon the pun) explanation I got around here is that "dinner" is when it's more of an event, like eating out or having some decoration on the table etc. Lunch and supper are supposed to be run-of-the-mill meals, while dinner can come anytime in the interval covered by those two, and replace either or just get inserted.

Judging by the volume of the citizens I see around the place, I figure the latter is the most frequent.