The scattering of matter wave solitons on attractive potentials enables one to populate bound states, a feature impossible with noninteracting wave packets. Compared to noninteracting states, the populated states are renormalized by the attractive interactions between atoms and keep the same topology. This renormalization can even transform a virtual state into a bound state. Our numerical studies show how such scattering experiments can reveal and characterize the surface states of a periodic structure whose translational invariance has been broken. Our proposal can be implemented with current experimental techniques.