Was in Austria, trying to find a way back to Germany, had landed at Krems with the plan being to fly along the Danube, VFR under the weather, to Vilshofen where the weather looked to be clearing - the reports showed a line of Thunderstorms from the Alps stringing out to the North East.
Checked with Linz, they told me "no go, cloud base is less than 500 feet", but they did tell me that the tops were anticipated to be around 7000 feet so the plan was to take off and climb through broken Cumulus, unfortunately with embedded CBs in them. We then just aimed towards where it was slightly less dark, even though our routing took us perilously close to Czech airspace - was wondering what would happen if we infringed their airspace without a flight plan (no flight plan is required for flights between Austria and Germany) but at that point, all I was concerned with doing is keeping myself away from the nasty bits.
Autopilot was set to climb at 300 feet a minute, as we were climbing, or rather bouncing, upwards. The guy sitting front right was looking out for lightning flashes and guiding me towards areas where it looked brighter. Came out on top at FL85.....sweating profusely, but thankful and promising not to do that again in a hurry.
Later that day I was listening to a fellow pilot talking to Langen Information who had got himself stuck in serious IMC and was trying to find a safe place to land, you could hear the concern in his voice and thought: that could have been me. And it could have been. Told myself: Next time I'll wait for the weather to settle... maybe.....