Long story short: I’m (24M) American, and I’m visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend’s family (I’ll be staying with them). I’ve never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I’m welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.
Driving a manual is pretty easy, but it depends on how you handle failure. The learning process requires making a few mistakes while you become familiar with a clutch and shifting gears.
Also, I think it’s much easier to learn if you know what the parts are doing. Watch some videos on how it all works and what different RPMs sound like.