The article is concerned with the interplay between politics, ideology and ethnographic practice ? taking as an example in case the German-Albanian ethnomusicological expedition of 1957. The article points out that such a highly official endeavour of two socialist brother states, the GDR and Albania, was a fragile ground for scientific collaboration limiting the agency of the researchers both in their field and within their academic institutions. It also describes the methodological challenges imposed by a revisiting fieldwork in 2004 employing oral history methods, photo and audio elicitation interviews in an attempt to “bring the archive into the field”.