Make sure your using utf-8 encoding
# for reading files
file = open("test.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")
# for strings
TestText = "Test - āĀēĒčČ..šŠūŪžŽ" # this not UTF-8...it is a Unicode string in Python 3.X.
TestText2 = TestText.encode('utf8') # this is a UTF-8-encoded byte string.