Good chat sites to make friends abroad ?

[0002378]

Hello, my friend (American) is planning to move to Europe, and is looking to make new friends/pen pals online in Europe, so that when she does move, she already somewhat knows a few people.

Are there any good/safe/popular chat sites for finding people by country/city ? Perhaps sites where they have sub-forums organized by country/city or where one can search for people by location ?

It is a requirement that all members of such a site disclose their location because that is going to be important to my friend. For instance, my friend might be interested in only meeting people from Zurich, and should be able to perform a search accordingly.

In other words, I'm not interested in a general chat site where you have to ask a fellow member for location. It should be a site that is geared towards meeting people from other countries/cities and where a member's location is displayed (location being a required field).

I did find one such site, but am not sure how good it is, yet. I guess this is an example of a site where all people say where they're from. http://www.penpalworld.com/ I would like to find more sites like these.

Thanks !

 

[Lisasmith]

Try this two..

• Meetup (Free) Meetup works across thousands of cities. ...
• Nextdoor (Free) Want to get to know your neighbors more easily but never seem to run into them? .

 

[Gutwrench]

My concern would be in reality it’s functions more like a hybrid dating site. Hopefully it works for you.

 

[D.T.]

Try this two..

• Nextdoor (Free) Want to get to know your neighbors more easily but never seem to run into them? .

Right, but Nextdoor is highly localized (we use it), it's just about the exact opposite of what the OP requested

 

[lowendlinux]

https://www.thelocal.ch/

Has a forum.

 

[0002378]

Try this two..

• Meetup (Free) Meetup works across thousands of cities. ...
• Nextdoor (Free) Want to get to know your neighbors more easily but never seem to run into them? .

Thanks for the reply.

I've used Meetup for many years. It's actually not what I'm looking for at the moment coz Meetup is more about scheduled events and meeting people locally.
[doublepost=1528320504][/doublepost]

My concern would be in reality it’s functions more like a hybrid dating site. Hopefully it works for you.

Hmmm ... will have to see

I signed my friend up on penpalworld.com and so far, it seems decent.
[doublepost=1528320564][/doublepost]

Right, but Nextdoor is highly localized (we use it), it's just about the exact opposite of what the OP requested

Right, it is the opposite of what we're looking for. Sounds interesting anyway ... will have to check out Nextdoor.
[doublepost=1528320696][/doublepost]

https://www.thelocal.ch/

Has a forum.

Cool, thanks ! It looks promising.

 

[D.T.]

Right, it is the opposite of what we're looking for. Sounds interesting anyway ... will have to check out Nextdoor.

It's pretty helpful (not to derail your thread too much), basically like a _very_ scaled down Facebook, where you register your actual address and name. So it's great for neighborhood organizing (like multi home garage sales, parties, etc.), keeping an eye out on things (kind of a digital neighborhood watch), the content model is super simple, just posts and a for sale/for free, with a little descriptive data to filter posts. We use it to post "curb alerts" where we're pitching something, but want to give local folks the opportunity to come take it.

If there's not a Nextdoor instance for your area, you can easily start one for free (they do some fairly minimal advertising for a revenue model, mostly home related services, like AC, security, phones, but it's very passive).

Web based with pretty good native mobile apps as well.

 

[Posbo]

Since I have internet, I am searching for penpals. I must say it is becoming more and more difficult to find a penpal nowadays. I guess it becomes out of fashion. There are still a lot of penpal sites active of course, and looks like they all have lots of active members, but to find someone who replies to the e-mails. Very difficult.