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.
Getting the car to start rolling up a hill instead of down it backwards is also an important thing to get the hang of before someone is right behind you in traffic.
Luckily you can always fall back to a handbrake start if you need to, I’ll usually always do that if I’m driving a car I’m not at all used to and find myself in an uphill start.