title: error encoding string as unicode in python 2.7?
body: <p>I want to print the unicode version of a string in Python 2.7. It works fine in Python 3.
  But with python 2.7, I get the following error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>x="strings are now utf-8 \u03BCnico\u0394é!"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Python 3:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>print('Python', python_version())
  print(x)
  
  Python 3.4.1
  strings are now utf-8 μnicoΔé!
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Python 2.7</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; x='strings are now utf-8 \u03BCnico\u0394é!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; x.encode('utf-8')
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "&lt;stdin&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
  UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 38: ordinal not in range(128)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong>
  I tried the followimg:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; x = u'strings are now utf-8 \\u03BCnico\\u0394\xc3\xa9!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; x
  u'strings are now utf-8 \\u03BCnico\\u0394\xc3\xa9!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; x.encode("utf-8")
  'strings are now utf-8 \\u03BCnico\\u0394\xc3\x83\xc2\xa9!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; x
  u'strings are now utf-8 \\u03BCnico\\u0394\xc3\xa9!'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I don't see the encoding happening</p>
  
  <p>EDIT 2:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; x=u'strings are now utf-8 \u03BCnico\u0394é!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; x.encode("utf-8")
  'strings are now utf-8 \xce\xbcnico\xce\x94\xc3\xa9!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; b=x.encode("utf-8")
  &gt;&gt;&gt; b
  'strings are now utf-8 \xce\xbcnico\xce\x94\xc3\xa9!'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; 
  </code></pre>