It had been a strange week. I had the paper accepted for publication, Finland won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in history and Leila and I were temporarily adopted by a cat. Despite these weird omens I wanted to climb on Sunday and had been rattling the cages of my climbing partners to find willing compadres. Patrik, having this year discovered how much fun real rock climbing is, was very interested. Lorna (on holidays) had loaned me her car so we had transportation. While we watched Finland break all sorts of ground at Pam's Eurovision party, Patrik and I fixed the plan - if it isn't raining I would pick him up at 10am.

But it was raining. The bloody weather forecasters had got it completely wrong, again. Patrik called a little after ten and confirmed that climbing was off. however, the sun came out just after noon, so I called Patrik back and asked if he was still keen. I went round to pick him up, got hassled by some cops while waiting in the car outside his apartment (I was illegaly parked). We drove to Weesen at the western tip of the Wallensee and headed up to the gallery. At around 2pm we found the perfect carpark and there discovered that Patrik had forgotten his shoes (they were in for repairs at the gym). Marched up the short staircase to the first walls and went looking for Ottos Mecanique (a triplet of two pitch climbs, one of which was a 4c). We set up at the base of something else by mistake (Anfanger) and we wouldn't figure out our mistake for quite a while. I headed up on the first lead and found that for a supposed 4c this was a bit tricky but not too bad (it was actually a 5a). Patrik followed in his street shoes and did pretty well, working his way up to and then past my hanging belay to sit up on top by the upper path. When I joined him up there on the path we looked for our next pitch, still thinking we were climbing on Ottos Mecanique. I found something I thought looked like a 4c and headed up, after a couple of difficult metres I had to downclimb and give up (I had actually started on Hallux, a 6b). The climb just to the right seemed a bit easier and we thought that perhaps this was what we wanted (it wasn't). It did feel a lot harder than the first pitch and I began to wonder about the rating system as this was the hardest 4a I had ever seen (I was actually climbing Doggie, 6a). I had to rest under an overhanging bulge before committing to a difficult couple of moves. At the top I set up my anchor, lowered my shoes down to Patrik and (when he was ready) belayed him up. He got about two clips up and then had real trouble getting any further, after a while he asked to be lowered. I was belaying him using my gi-gi and while this is great for belaying it sucks big time for lowering. After a while he was down again. I rapped off and we headed back down the trail to get to the base of our first climb where our packs were. It was down there that we discovered our navigational mistakes. Wow, Patrik can climb 5a in street shoes and I did a 6a in the real world. Cool.

We went looking for the real Ottos Mecanique and found it, but there was a young couple just starting up so I took Patrik to Les 7 petites fugues de David instead where he put my shoes on to lead a 4c and then a 5a. The 5a was pretty exciting as Patrik had to fight through a "Fred moment" (defined as a difficult moment just before making the second clip, a situation with enough rope out that falling back down to the ground is a real possibility). After this we went back to Ottos and found the first pitch clear, so I headed up on lead. It was slippery and not so easy, but I eventually reached the first belay in fairly decent time. I set the anchor and then dropped my shoes over the edge for Patrik. He got up the first easy ledge and then had real trouble trying to make the next section. The shoes were dirty, the rock was slippery and it isn't really obvious where to go. He had tried to climb up to the right of the line and peeled off into a pendulum. This would have been ok but he struck his shoulder hard on the way and came within inches of falling back onto that first ledge (he had to curl up his legs to avoid it). Both of these shook him up enough that he asked to be lowered off, saying that he wasn't keen on trying that again. I rapped down and we went back to the Petites fugues where Patrik had a go at a 4c, but his lead head was gone and the climb was aborted after a couple of clips. Still it had been a great afternoon of climbing and at 6.30pm it was time to head off anyway.