What happened with python? messed strings?

[algaba at droog.sdf-eu.org]

Hi, 
I used extensively python and now I find this mess with strings,
I can't even reproduce tutorial examples:
>>> "apfel".encode('utf-8')  (it was with umlaut)
  File "<stdin>", line 0
    
    ^
SyntaxError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc4 in position 1: 
ordinal not in range(128)
>>> 
Is there any good guide to this mess of codecs and hell ?

python should have stayed at version 1.5, every single 'improvement'
has been a mess. But this is the definitive hell. 

thanks!

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