How to track down past host family?

July 13, 2007 11:32 AM

How to track down my host family from six years ago?

I went on an exchange to Germany as a teen and after returning, lost track of the family that hosted me. Since it was a while back, information from that exchange was not kept by my high school.

All I have now is the name of the mother of the family, as well as that of her daughter (who should be about 20 or 21), and the name of the high school the daughter and I attended. I also have their address at the time, and although I plan on writing them, I would like to know where I can find them online. I can read German well enough, but I am awful at speaking or writing it, which will make contacting them a little difficult. The girl my age likely still speaks fluent English.

Crossing their names and the city in Google gave me no results. It's easy to find most young, internet-using Americans on Myspace or Facebook, but those sites had no results for the names I searched. What social networking sites are popular with German teens? Would you recommend any German people search websites or other popular German sites I may not have checked?

Thanks!

posted by sian to grab bag (6 comments total)

This map seems to say that bebo is worth a stop for Germany.
posted by mdonley at 11:34 AM on July 13, 2007

Gah, I read the map wrong - you don't want bebo, you want studiverzeichnis.
posted by mdonley at 11:36 AM on July 13, 2007

mdonley--thanks for the link! I might've found her, as I just sent a message to a profile with her unique first name and last initial. We shall see...
posted by sian at 12:20 PM on July 13, 2007

Wow, I totally thought that might be a dead end! Nice!
posted by mdonley at 1:03 PM on July 13, 2007

Why don't you try the phone book to see if the family is still living at their old address? Or, you could even leave the location blank and search all over Germany - not recommended if their last name is Müller or something very common like that.

Telefonbuch.de. (Try the "Profimodus" if you want to enter more information, not just their last name.)

Good luck!
posted by amf at 1:50 PM on July 13, 2007

Did your high school have their own program, or did they work with a larger study abroad company? If so, the company should have that info.
posted by ORthey at 3:24 PM on July 13, 2007