I learned on both standard and automatic, and I’ve taught several people to drive a standard. It’s not really very difficult, except for learning how to do an uphill start. You can learn to use a standard in an hour for level and downhill starts. For uphill you need practice. You need to find a hill without traffic so you can practice starting up over and over again.
I’ve seen some people don’t get the basic idea that you have to control the clutch by feel. Initially you wil have to let the clutch slip a lot to get used to the feel of it. It becomes second nature after a while. While practicing you need to intentionally slip the clutch a lot to really become familiar with it. I’ve seen people doing an awful job because someone harangued them about riding the clutch. Forget about that. You will have a lot of additional clutch slip while you are learning. It will eventually become second nature and you’ll do a much better job. If your clutch would have last 50,000 miles, well it might only last 49,000 miles as result of that extra friction. Not that big a deal, because if you don’t learn to shift well, the clutch is only going to last 25,000 miles (numbers used for illustration. You get what you get out of a clutch).
The first time I drove a manual was when I picked up a new car on the other side of Boston from where I lived and had to get it home at rush hour. I plotted a course with the fewest trafffic lights, but it was still a bit of an adventure. At one stop light I turned around (it was a convertible) and said to the motorcycle behind me, “Go around me. I’m incompetent.”
I managed to get it home and the next morning I went out early and practiced for an hour before work. Within 2 or 3 days it was second nature.
Learned from driving a friend’s car and then a car that my parents owned. Had some tips from the friend and from my parents, but I don’t remember the details, and I’m sure it wasn’t any particular prescribed teaching method. That was 25 years ago.
My sister, starting seven years ago, taught her two daughters to drive stick using a more deliberate method of instruction. As TriPolar notes, you have to develop the “feel” for where the clutch begins to engage, and how rapidly it engages after that; you also have to develop the “feel” for how the engine responds to the accelerator pedal. To those ends, the following steps are recommended:
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With the car at a dead stop on a flat, empty parking lot, engage the parking brake, push the clutch in and select first gear. Keep your right foot off of the accelerator. Now watch the tachometer, and let the clutch out just until the engine RPM starts to dip. That’s the start of clutch engagement. Don’t engage the clutch any further; push it back to the floor, and let it out again until the RPM starts to dip. Repeat this a couple of dozen times, and your left leg and foot will start to develop a feel for where clutch begins to engage. Because the engine is at idle, and you’re only just barely engaging the clutch, wear will be minimal for this portion of the exercise.
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With the transmission in neutral and the parking brake set, put your right foot on the accelerator, and press it until the RPM comes up to about 1500. Release. Repeat this a couple dozen times, and your right leg and foot will start to develop a feel for how much to press the gas when launching.
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Release the parking brake, clutch-in, select first gear. Now combine your left and right foot actions: rev the engine up a bit, and slowly release the clutch until the car just starts to roll forward. As soon as the car starts to move clutch back in, and take your right foot off the gas and brake to a stop. Repeat this partial-launch a couple dozen times.
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Repeat step 3, engaging the clutch a bit farther than you did, and getting to a bit higher speed before stopping.
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Repeat step three, this time releasing the clutch completely until the car is idling forward.
I think an approach like this is likely to give the fastest results at developing the muscle memory needed to smoothly launch the car.
One advantage you have being located in Europe is that you can actually rent a nice manual transmission car. If you go the autodidact route, a more upscale car with a reasonably powerful turbodiesel engine is going to much more forgiving than the aneimic econoboxes the car sharing group probably uses. Last time I was over there, we got a Ford crossover with a big turbodiesel V6 that drove wonderfully and was almost impossible to stall. One of my travelling companions who is generally manual-phobic (she won’t drive any of my manual vehicles at home) even drove a little and said she actually enjoyed it.
Rent yourself a nice TDI Passat or C-class Mercedes or similar for a weekend and you should be ready to move up (down?) to a manual economy car.
I learned how to drive on an automatic (my parents’ 1977 Cadillac Sedan deVille, a.k.a. The Battlestar). About a year or so after I got my license, my dad bought an extra car – a little Plymouth TC3 coupe, with a stick. My parents taught me to drive the stick, but I was pretty bad at it for at least a few months.
I drove several cars with sticks through the 80s and early 90s, but spent the last 15 years rarely, if ever, driving a stick. Then, last fall, I bought my midlife crisis car – a Ford Mustang, with a stick. It came back to me quickly, but the first few days with the new car were a little shaky. 
I’d strongly suggest finding a friend that has driven a manual, and spend a couple of hours going over how it works. Go to a nice flat open parking lot, let them drive, and ask them to talk you through what they are doing and why.
ie…
First you depress the clutch, then you put the car in neutral. It’s over here, just like the drawing on the shifter knob shows.
Second, you start the car
That kind of walk through.
Then practice a little in the parking lot. Practice starting the car, getting moving, upshifting, braking, downshifting.
Finally, find an empty road or parking lot with a hill. Practice moving forward from a stop.
A couple of hours and you should be good.
But try this all when you have time and an empty area. My first try driving a manual was when I was 16, and we were heading to church. Nothing like a time crunch and a car full of family to make stalling the car a traumatic experience.
Zombie spam! The worst kind.
zombie or no
they know how to drive manuals because they can use any vehicle to catch humans.