[SQLObject] UnicodeEncodeError

[Markus W. B. <ma...@si...>]

I have run into that before and can't remember how I got around it:

UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xf3'

This is what I'm trying to do: 
solicitud = model.Solicitud(lugar_nacimiento     = 
kw['lugar_nacimiento'].decode('utf-8'))

I have also tried 
solicitud = model.Solicitud(lugar_nacimiento     = kw['lugar_nacimiento'])

where the problem is the word 'Gijón' passed to a input field and which prints 
out nicely as 'Gij\u00f3n'

Any hints? (this one should be on the FAQ ;-)

I am using SQLObject (this time) with turbogears on Ubuntu with mysql 
5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.1 for debian-linux-gnu on x86_64