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.
It’s not too bad. You can get passable in a manual with less than a day of practice.
There are a lot of good tips in here, but I’ll add a few that seem to be missing/less prioritized.
Practice rev matching while down shifting. You’ll be a lot more comfortable with the car if you can get into a lower gear faster. This will allow you to pass and accelerate smoother and with confidence.
Practice recovering from a stall (although you’re probably going to do this accidentally anyway). Foot on brake, push the clutch all the way in, shift to neutral or 1st (I prefer 1st to get into gear faster), start the car, and get moving. This process should be fairly automatic and done within a second or two.
On that note, don’t worry about stalling the car. It feels terrible, and embarrassing, but it’s not really damaging the vehicle (might wear out the engine mounts a little faster, but no one really cares).
Most important, have fun!