Travel Tips: How to Save Money with Hotels, Airbnbs, Cruises
If you are booking a trip, these four tips will help you find a fair amount where you will be staying.
The problem has been resolved
- Bill Pollack keeps his promise to his late wife, Karin, and continues to travel the world.
- The crew of Oceania Cruises became Pollak’s support system after Karin passed away.
People travel for a variety of reasons, from seeing their families to realizing their lifelong dreams. Bill Pollack does this to his late wife, Karin, to keep his promise.
A few years ago, Pollack and the woman he calls the love of his life, vowed to each other that the first person who died had the most enjoyable thing in life: to continue on the trip.
After an excessive battle with pancreatic cancer, Karin passed away in 2022. Since then, 85-year-old Pollack has kept her promises, even though it’s not easy. He believes in a special group of people who helped him get through it, the crew of the Oceania Cruises.
The cruise line holds a special place in his heart, considering the couple is a big traveler and cruiser. They spent hundreds of days easily at the ocean, and this July the maiden voyage of Oceania Alra marked Pollak’s 133rd cruise.
One trip after Karin’s death, which always tore him apart, was to be baptized by Oceania Vista in May 2023. He was the first to board a boat without his favorite travel companion, best friend or his late wife.
“It was horrifying and absolutely horrifying,” Pollack told USA Today in a sit-in interview with Oceania Alra’s Vienna-inspired coffee shop barista, where members of the crew and other guests stop greeting him.
He was afraid to sit alone at dinner and the show, but on the first show of the cruise, the hostess surprised him by asking him to sit next to him. “At the end of the performance, we stood up and left, and at the end of the aisle there were seven Oceania employees who were with me,” Pollack said. “We hugged and cried. It was beautiful.”
On the same night, another longtime Oceania employee told him not to let him retire to his room, but to go to the horizon lounge for Pollack’s favorite entertainment, dance. “It was the first time in six months that I felt human,” he said. “It’s family. I don’t care what anyone says. I know it’s a trivial and overused, but that’s true.”
It was a journey to navigate Pollack’s sadness. Most of his trips are difficult. Others find it bittersweet. The trip may never be the same, but his family and friends (including the Oceanian crew) were lifelines to find small moments of joy on the trip again.
Love for travel – and each other
Apparently, Pollak and Karin met through the trip. She was his travel agency and coordinated his business trips while working in the aviation industry. At the time, both had unhappy marriages to others, but there was an undeniable connection. “We were basically talking every day at 4:30pm. I just called and talked about the industry. We always talk a little more about personal life,” he said.
Pollack recalls Karin making his first move. Her bravery is one of his favorite qualities. A few years after the meeting, the two divorced their first spouse and married in 1991.
“I can’t explain love, but I was very fortunate to find her and she was lucky to find me,” he said. “I mean, we fit well.”
During the 32-year marriage, the couple traveled extensively, from repeated trips to Bali across India. “I used to earn a lot of plane miles, but she used a lot of plane miles, so it all worked,” he joked. “Everything coincided.”
After retirement, couples often traveled on cruises for up to six months.
“This is a house.”
Some of their most precious memories include Oceania, including renewing vows on insignia ships during a cruise around the world, and renewing unexpected vows in Barcelona for 10 days after the cruise due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland where the plane was grounded.
Another memorable sailing was a 32-day cruise in Nautica from Rome to Singapore in 2008. Off the coast between Somalia and Yemen, the ship is attacked by pirates and passengers are told to wait on deck 5 as the captain spikes the ship. During the stressful moments, Karin was at the spa, Pollack said with a laugh.
From service to route, the couple enjoyed Oceania so much that they vowed not to sail on another line. “We spent the first two days hugging while we were on board,” he said. “Not only the guests, but the crew too.” Now he has known the crew for nearly 20 years.
Still, he thinks about Karin often, and many places remind him of her. Some say he cannot return, like Paris, while others offer comfort, like the Oceanian ship.
Following the family maxim, Bill Pollack, a place where the heart is, jokes that he is about nine years old. One is his home in Phoenix, which he designed with Karin a few years ago and is “full of old and wonderful memorabilia” from their trip. For the other eight, they are Oceania cruise ships. As he says, “This is a house, it’s just.”
