Abstract
The paper presents findings of a field research in return ethnography in a changing environment of village people. Rural lifestyle appears to be a viable alternative to the urban and city way of living. Significantly romanticized ideas about the village life in Czechoslovak countryside have been reflected in stereotypes of friendly co-existence, self-sufficiency, natural time flow, daily interactions with nature, and harmony with the environment. The reality of everyday life was different 50 years ago and is also different today. A time gap of half of a century incites a discussion what time is objectively researchable in ethnographic terrain. Detailed records of an ethnographer over time, in a particular location, and related to a particular group of respondents, has a more sustained value of the illustrator and usable source of knowledge. Such was an ethnographic record of daily activities of a villager living in Sihlian Plain (Central Slovakia) of August 1967, and a return field research conducted fifty years later, in May 2017. The authors wish to demonstrate the changes in daily activities of model families while the records were obtained by their observation. At the same time, the authors point out those phenomena that remain long-lasting and stable.