One rarely expects a friendly chat from a customs officer at a US/Canada border crossing.

After he cleared me through, a gentleman at Vancouver International Airport called after me, asking “Eigler? Eigler?”.

It turns out he is one of our clan too, and has some not-so-remote relationship to the same Austrian family that my father’s side descended from. He claimed that there is still a 450-year-old family home in a particular town, and that the whole village would come out to celebrate if an Eigler came by to visit.

Perhaps some day we’ll go and see.