Got into work and went to check the mail-room. No mail but Jorge was there and a spark of inspiration had me asking him if he wanted to go climbing this afternoon. He had physiotherapy until about 6pm, but he said that he could maybe speed things up and get us out of here a half hour earlier. We agreed that The Gallery above the Wallensee would be our target. However, there were some adjustments to be made. Jorge's climbing shoes were locked in a cabinet in the Schlieren climbing gym. So I thought maybe he could squeeze into Leila's old shoes. I would try and get home and bring Leila's shoes after lunch, he could try them on.

However, this did not transpire. Work dissolved my resolve and I didn't get time to get away. So at around 5.30pm a distinctly odd comedy unfolded. Jorge called me and I headed downstairs to meet him and his unbelieveably large Jeep in the carpark. We blasted off and it took a moment for me to realize Jorge hadn't realized that I didn't have shoes or gear or anything. It took a little while to get the message across that we had to turn around and head back up the hill to my place. At my place I rummaged around looking for a pair of shoes that Leila had thrown away at least a year ago. A quick call to her confirmed this and I was left explaining it to Jorge. Schuen sind weg. Schuen sind abfall. Keine schuen.

Plan B. Head to Schlieren, pick up Jorge's shoes and then continue onwards to Baden. In Baden, somewhere, was a small climbing wall that I had never seen. Jean-Marc had once told me about it last year, but I had not foggiest notion of where exactly it was. Too late, we were locked and loaded. On the way to Schlieren Jorge and I got to talking about girls. Well he talked about girls, I talked about Leila. This is normal. Somehow we missed an important turn. I couldn't help noticing that at 7pm the sun was dipping downwards out of the sky, and as we finally pulled into the Schlieren gym I wondered if this was going to work out. While Jorge was hunting out his shoes I asked some staff in the gym if they knew the place I wanted to go to. The owner pulled out an old battered copy of Plaisir Jura and pointed at some spot near Baden he thought may be what we were looking for. Back in Jorge's gigantic truck and I was having no confidence in the Schlieren guy's opinion, therefore I called the source. Unfortunately, Jean-Marc wasn't picking up the phone.

So there we were, rumbling down the highway ten minutes out of Baden and absolutely no clue whatsoever where we might find the climbing wall. We didn't exactly have the time to look around for it either. Good thing Jean-Marc called us a few minutes from town. His directions were more fuzzy recollections of odd bits of things he remembered about the one time he had been taken there by a six-armed climbing monster about a thousand years ago. Still, it was better than nothing. We got on the right side of the river, saw a kebab shop and started heading up hill looking for a restaurant. Pretty soon we knew this wasn't quite the right spot. In between Jorge asking clueless strangers and me repeatedly calling Jean-Marc to jog his memory we finally did locate a restaurant. The wall was about 50 metres away. My god, we found it. It was 8pm.

Remarkably, it stayed light enough for us to climb until 10pm. You know, we both got in three very nice leads apiece. We made some new friends too as there were about a dozen other people scrabbling up and down the small wall. At the top of my last climb I turned to look out across the river to the town below us.

Baden looks strangely beautiful in the evening, a mix of fluorescent street lighting and medieval ruins over the old city, strangely beautiful indeed.