Anastasia Voulgari is forty-six, lives in the Koukaki neighborhood of Athens, and translates books from Greek into English for a living. She has done this for nineteen years, mostly from a desk in the corner of her living room. In January 2024, she began renting that living room — her actual living room, with her actual chair and her actual books and her actual cat — to other working people, for fourteen euros an hour, on the days she didn't need it herself. We met her in late March, on the kitchen side of that same living room, with a guest at work in the chair. She made us tea. We talked, in Greek, for ninety-seven minutes. What follows has been edited.
Why did you start letting people work here?
The rent. I have been in this apartment for sixteen years, and last spring my landlord raised my rent again — the fourth time since 2019. He is not a bad man. I know him. His daughter is my goddaughter, in fact. But he is in difficulty too, and the increase was, by his lights, reasonable.
I had three options. Move. Take a roommate. Find another stream of income. I am too old to live with a stranger and too settled to leave the neighborhood, so I started looking, in a small way, at the third option. A friend who hosts on FlexSlice in Pangrati explained how it worked. I said no, three times. Then I said yes. That was a year and a half ago.
Most of your guests are working — translators, writers, designers. Was that intentional?
Yes. I will not rent to consultants. I want to be very clear about this. I have, in eighteen months, refused twenty-two consultants and three venture capitalists.
The reason is not snobbery. It is that consultants make a particular kind of phone call. Loud. Confident. Many. They book a room to make phone calls. This is a fine business. It is not the business of my living room. My living room is for the kind of work that wants quiet. So I screen for that, in my own way. I read the message they send when they book. If it says "looking for a place to take calls," I decline. If it says "looking for a quiet place to write," I accept. I do not always get it right. But it has, in my judgment, gone very well so far.
What changed when you started having guests?
Many small things. The first was that I cleaned the apartment more regularly. Not to a guest standard — I do not, despite what my mother believes, have a guest standard — but enough that I was not embarrassed. I moved a few personal photographs to the bedroom. I bought a second kettle, because I could not justify being out of tea on a day when I had a paying guest. None of these things felt large at the time. Looking back, they were, perhaps, large.
The second was that I began to work differently myself. When I was alone in this room I was, frankly, a slob. I would put my feet on the table. I would take phone calls in my pajamas. I would, occasionally, swear at a translation that had defeated me, in the loud and lengthy Greek I save for the worst sentences. I cannot do this anymore. Or rather: I can, but only on the four or five days a week that the room is mine. The other two or three, I am — in my own apartment — a guest.
Did that bother you?
For about two months, yes. Then it began to feel, in a way I did not expect, useful. I am — I will admit this — slightly more professional when I share my own room. My posture improves. I drink less coffee. I stand up and stretch instead of taking the same phone call lying on the rug for forty minutes. The presence of another working person in the room, even one I have never met before that morning, holds me, slightly, to a higher standard than I would otherwise hold myself. This has been a surprise. It has also been, in the work I am doing now, very visible. The translation I finished last month is — I think, though it is too soon to say — the best I have done in a decade.
A guest was working in the apartment during this interview, in the chair by the south window. She had headphones on and did not, as far as we could tell, hear our conversation. We checked. She had been there since nine, was working on what she said was a museum catalogue, and intended to stay until two. She tipped Anastasia three euros on her way out.
What's the strangest thing a guest has done?
One guest — a woman from Toronto — asked, very politely, if she could spend her break reading my books. Not a book, you understand. My books. The translations I have made. She had read three of them before she came. She asked if I would inscribe them. I sat at my own kitchen table, on a Tuesday, signing eight books for a guest who had paid me fourteen euros an hour to work in my living room. I have never felt more ridiculous. It was wonderful.
The second strangest is more recent. A man from London left a note on the kitchen counter, after his fifth booking, that simply said: "Cat is excellent. Owner also." I have kept the note. It is on the fridge.
What about the cat?
She is fifteen years old. Her name is Athena. She has, in eighteen months of guests, accepted four of them as people she will sit on, and rejected the rest. This ratio is, by her standards, extremely generous, and I take it as a sign that the screening process is, broadly, working.
Two guests have been allergic. They warned me in advance. I removed Athena to the bedroom for those days, and she sulked, and they paid me slightly more in compensation, and everyone was, eventually, content.
Has hosting changed the neighborhood for you?
Yes, and this is the part I find harder to talk about. Koukaki has been, for a decade, the most-changing neighborhood in Athens. The rents have tripled. The cafés have multiplied. The neighbors I grew up with have, most of them, left. By participating in the working-from-anywhere economy — even at my small, kitchen-table scale — I am, technically, a part of the system that has changed my neighborhood.
I have thought about this a great deal. My conclusion, for the moment, is that I am at peace with my own small participation, because I am one of the people the system was, in theory, supposed to protect. I have lived here sixteen years. I will, with this income, stay another sixteen. Without it, I would not. The people who book my room arrive, work quietly, and leave. They are not — most of them — staying in Koukaki. They are working here for a day, perhaps a week, and then going home. The neighborhood is, briefly, theirs. Then it is, again, mine.
I do not think this is a complete answer. I think it is, however, the honest one. I would also say: I do not envy the cafés. They are in a much harder position than I am. I will write about this, perhaps, one day.
Would you recommend it to other people in your position?
Other translators? Other people with quiet apartments and an income that has not kept up with the rent? Yes. But carefully. You have to like people, slightly. Not love them, slightly. Just like them, slightly. You have to enjoy the small ceremony of meeting a stranger, exchanging a few words, leaving them to work. If this ceremony exhausts you, do not do this. If it interests you, even a little, you will find that the work itself is light.
And a second piece of advice: charge what feels honest. I started at ten euros. Now I charge fourteen. I will probably, in a year, charge sixteen. The price is not the rent. The price is what feels like a fair exchange between two people who are, briefly, sharing a room. Decide this for yourself. Adjust it slowly.
What do you tell guests on their first visit?
Three things. The kettle is on the second shelf. The wifi password is on the magnet. The cat is named Athena and she will or will not like you; this is not personal. After that I leave, mostly. They are here to work. I am, mostly, glad they have come. We meet again at the end of the day, for thirty seconds, at the door. They say thank you. I say parakaló. They say it was a good day. Usually, they are telling the truth.