A group of benches sit idle across a well-lit lobby. I arch my back and rest my head against my backpack sleeping in a forward sitting down position until the night outside brightens up and presents streets covered in thick snow.

Coffee in hands and backpack in shoulders, I step outside of South Station and start a solitary tour of Boston, in the morning barely waking up from underneath its white fluffy snow duvet.

Colonial buildings flirt with tall glass skyscrapers and Boston, one of the most liveable cities in the United States, charms with its compact size and organised street layout.
Across the Charles, the city lowers its ‘corporate hot shot’ profile and quaintly transforms itself into rows of colourful wooden houses braving the icy streets at Bunker Hill.

With my feet already soaked from wearing Vans in the snow, I pause for a moment almost hypnotised by little snippets of Bostonian life.
Through the wooden windows I spot a couple fetching cups of coffee from the pantry, their children munching on cereal from white bowls under a dim yellow light.
In a different house, I spot an elderly man reading a large newspaper, his glance fixed to the headlines with the same intensity of the bright white light beaming across the dark living room.

I cross over railroads covered in a fine layer of snow towards Cambridge and for one hour, I can imagine what it is like to be a Harvard student. To carry books under a large cup of coffee, sprinting across the snowy campus with backpacks full of food and swimming gear. To sleep cozy in one of the red-bricked halls scattered around this cold and bare tree plain, to do it all thinking you are part of one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just a mere mile down the road, some of the brightest minds in the world rest their backs under the massive marble portico and work on ideas that will shape our future, and at Newbury Street, when the day is turning grey and dark, some of the greatest coffee in the country is served alongside sweet doughnuts.

I relish on the idea of ice skating at the Frog Pond, though time is short. At South Station, a double-decker bus awaits for the journey back to Penn Station, once again across fields of snow shining silver under the wintry moon.
Once in Manhattan, I transfer onto the subway and travel through underwater tunnels to Brooklin accompanied by New York’s night souls, the ones we do not see during the day, the late workers resting their heads on their hard plastic back seats, the drunk Puerto Rican girls nestling in a corner to vomit, the budget tourist embracing his backpack in a bid to make it to Jamaica Bay in one piece.

The airport terminal is empty at nearly two in the morning and only two flights are announced at Concourse B: San Salvador and San Jose.
Time to conquer a new region in the world: Central America.