What??... Explain yourself!!

It sounds like I'm confusing some of you with these posts, (not mentioning any names, Ashleigh Storey!) so here's an attempt to clarify a couple of things... If some of you are still a bit fuzzy about what I'm talkin' about... Wweeeelll!!

So... What's a "lock"? As far as I can work out the correct name for "Lock" in German is "Lock". But the name for ""Lock" in French is "ecluses", and here's an attempt to explain what a lock is...

- Bored yet??

The Rhine River springs into life in the Swiss Alps. From the spring it flows north and meets the sea in Holland. The spring is something over 2000 metres above sea level. A lot of this difference in altitude is reduced at the start of the river, but as the river flows through Germany, the altitude of the river is still quite high and falls gradually as it moves towards the mouth. 

But, vessels can't normally navigate these falls, due to natural hazards like "narrows" and "waterfalls" and "rapids". So, every now and then, along the length of the river weirs (small dams) were built, so on the upstream side of the river the water would be one height and on the downstream side the water level would be significantly lower. The differerence between the upstream and downstream levels varies from place to place and is normally about ten metres, but can be as much as 23 metres.

Now, to get a vessel either up or down the river, past these weirs, they built locks into the weirs. This is what a typical lock looks like, when you look at it from upstream where the level's higher...

So, if you're going downstream, you enter the lock at the high level, they close the doors behind you and let the water out of the lock - to flow downstream until you're at the downstream level. Then they open the downstream gates and away you go. 

If you're going upstream, you enter the lock at the lower level and they close the doors behind you. Once you're all tucked in they let water from the upstream side flow into the lock, until you rise to the upstream level. Then they open the upstream gates and away you go. Clear as mud?

Anyway, this is us, sitting in a lock, heading downstream, waiting for the lock doors to close behind us and for the water to be released downstream...

Here we are in the same place after the level's been lowered... 

We're looking at a sheer concrete wall...

and here we are coming out of the lock on the downstream side...

K??

Now, to get really boring... "French Balcony"

Back in the day, Napolean decided to sort out Paris and to get rid of all the cramped housing and sewers in the street to try to eliminate diseases, etc... So he hired a guy named Housemann who basically flattened Paris and rebuilt it. Housemann designed a particular style of house that used "French Doors", as windows.... See? These are now known as "Housemannian" apartments.

Anyway, a "French Door" opens outwards and is about 300 to 400 millimetres wide, so needs this amount of space to open. In most buildings, the door is set back a little in the frame and what you end up with is a balustrade (railing) that sits a few hundred millimetres off the face of the building. This is to allow the door to open. This small space means you can actually go outside and close the door behind you.

But... On the ships we've been travelling on, which advertise cabins with "French Balconys", they use sliding doors and the gap between the doors and the ballustrade is only about fifty millimetres. So, no matter how hard my wife makes me try, I can't go out onto the "French Balcony" and close the door behind me.

See what I mean? 

Now that I've explained all this, do you really care?

No, thought not. Me either!

And a very good night to you.