A beautiful crystal chandelier? A larger-than-life painting of the Prague Castle? A 4-feet Moser vase? No. None of these are great gifts when you want to bring a cheap, fun souvenir from Prague to your colleagues, classmates or friends in your chess team. But some classic Czech sweets, candies and chocolate bars? That’s an entirely different story: they are cheap, fun and also unique to the Czech environment. Not something you’d give your loved one for Valentine’s Days, sure, but they are lots of fun for the right person.

Now, of course, you can go very, very wrong with choosing the right kind. Not all of classic Czech sweets taste great or - more importantly - have a story behind them. Because let’s be honest: story sells. Even gifts. You want a sweet or a bar that has a rich history, something that has a track record behind it, something that was the primary cause behind our first cavities, drilled without anesthesia when the whole school went to the dentist like we used to do in the last years of Communism (but that’s an entirely different story). You want some sweets we grew up with. You want sweets like those listed in this post.