Gerhard, thanks, that
import os os.environ["NLS_LANG"] = "German_Germany.UTF8" import cx_Oracle con = cx_Oracle.connect("me/[EMAIL PROTECTED]") really helped. At least now the query returns something encoded differently. I dared not to believe that there is no "direct encoding change api" without touching the environment. Now all that is left is to find out if Oracle indeed has the same opinion what UTF8 should be like. Thank you very much, Harald -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list