title: MySQL C# Text Encoding Problems
body: <p>I have an old MySQL database with encoding set to UTF-8. I am using Ado.Net Entity framework to connect to it.</p>
  
  <p>The string that I retrieve from it have strange characters when ë like characters are expected.</p>
  
  <p>For example: "ë" is "Ã«".</p>
  
  <p>I thought I could get this right by converting from UTF8 to UTF16.</p>
  
  <pre><code> return Encoding.Unicode.GetString(                
              Encoding.Convert(
              Encoding.UTF8,
              Encoding.Unicode,
              Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(utf8)));
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This however doesn't change a thing.</p>
  
  <p>How could I get the data from this database in proper form?</p>