Well, I just tried:
mb_convert_encoding($theTown, "ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8"); echo mb_detect_encoding($theTown);
and
$newStr = utf8_decode($theTown) ; echo mb_detect_encoding($newStr);
but I still get "UTF-8" echo'ed... did I do it wrong?
Alternatatively, anyone got a clever regex syntax to make this approach more general?
if (ereg("Schneidem.+hl", $theTown)) { $theTown = 'Schneidemühl'; }
I may be chasing the wrong squirrel, because the above routine works and makes the mySQL query work, but when I place the same echo debug, I still get "UTF-8" echoed....
????