Shifting Accommodation is a short humorous story by the famous Russian writer, playwright and theatrical personage Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891 - 1940).

From the Diary of an ingenious comrade Polosukhin:

November 21.

Well, Moscow… What a city… Oh, I will tell

you now. There are no available apartments here.

Absolutely no vacant flats! I even had to send a

telegram to my wife and tell her to stay home and wait

for a while. I slept three nights in the bathtub at

Karabuev's apartment. Well, what can I say, not that

bad as it may seem, pretty comfortable, I would say,

just water dripping from time to time. Then I slept two

nights on a gas stove at Shchuevsky's apartment. In

Yelabuga, my hometown, people say that this stove is a

very convenient thing. Hell no, I say! Some screws are

sticking in here and there, and the cookmaid is

grumbling, obviously not happy about my sleeping

there...

December 23.

I'm done, I'm going back to Yelabuga…