Teaching Myself to Drive Stick Shift

When I moved back to Switzerland I realized that I would need a car, since I lived in Lausanne but worked near Neuchatel, 40 minutes away. What I also realized was that I only knew how to drive automatic, and would probably have a tough time finding a decent car at a decent price since 90% of cars in Europe are still manual. Therefore, I needed to learn to drive stick (somehow).

As luck had it a friend came into town for a few days with a rental car, and agreed to give me a lesson. After two hours with him I understood most of the basics, but definitely wasn't very good and didn't feel comfortable outside the parking lot. Nevertheless, I went out the next Saturday and rented a car for a month, from a very nice Lebanese man (recommended by my good friend Marc) who only accepted cash. The worst part was getting the car out of his parking lot, and I just prayed he wasn't looking as a I screeched and peeled the tires as I turned the corner.

I managed to get it back to my house about a kilometer away, with my nerves shot, and parked it jerkily with a sign of relief. First step accomplished. I didn't even take it out again that day, as I waited to get my confidence back.

The next day, Sunday, the day with the least amount of traffic, I took it out to the countryside in beautiful, sunny, cloud-free weather, to try to get used to changing gears without the complication of hills and other cars. Things went reasonably well, and I even stopped off for lunch in the only restaurant in a tiny Swiss village. I fell really good about the first day and thought maybe it wouldn't be so hard to learn. When I headed back to Lausanne, though, I got stuck at a traffic light on an uphill slope, and stalled the car trying to get back into first gear. I stalled and rolled backwards so many times on that hill that I really feared I was going to hit the car behind me, so I threw on the flashers and made all the cars behind me go around me. I must have sat through about 3 cycles of that light before there was no car behind me for long enough that I could let the car roll backwards while I pushed the gas and waited for the gear to catch. I managed to get the car home safely, although I was a nervous wreck from the anxiety of the stoplight.

I made it my goal that every day I needed to take the car out at least once, even if it was just to get a few groceries or pick up the dry cleaning.  The most unnerving experience was about 7 days into my experiment when I was stopped on a hill at a light and a bus pulled up behind me and came within 3 feet of my bumper. I knew I didn't yet have the finesse to know for sure that I could get the car going on the first try, and especially not under duress. When the light changed he started forward while I stalled and rolled backwards, which left only one foot between us. I restarted the engine and tried again, and again he went forward while I stalled and rolled back and was left with mere inches and a very frustrated bus driver. The third time I sent all the angels to hell and gunned the gas as hard as I could, and, lurching and wheezing forward, managed to get out of that intersection.

For about 3 weeks I was a terrified mess, stalling all over the hills and valleys of Lausanne, but slowly but surely my confidence improved, parking got easier, and stop lights began to no longer scare me.  About a month after I'd started I realized one day that I had done it - I could drive stick.

The next step, however, was buying a car.

Therefore, for several Saturdays in a row I found myself out at used car lots, test driving anything I could find that was under 15,000CHF, which wasn't very many cars. I got to see how each car's gears felt slightly different and responded in a different way and it gave me a much greater appreciation for what I was actually doing by manually changing gears.

Most of the guys selling the cars didn't speak any English, so I realized that I was going to have to go through the whole process in French, and just hoped that I would understand enough to know what was going on and that the sales guy would be fair and not try to rip me off. In the end I settled on a silver 2008 Renault Clio, which looked almost just exactly like the rental car I had learned in. The best part of my Clio was that it was from a series called "Rip Curl" and was decked out with bright red and black seats and the Rip Curl logo on the trunk, running boards, and dashboard, so as not to be missed. My little surfer car got me jetting to work and back, up and down mountains all over Switzerland, and squeezing into the tiniest of parallel parking spots, with my newly acquired manual skills.