Russian/Polish Character problem with MySQL

Hi all,

This isn't a vital problem but I'm keen to figure out how to beat this problem!

I've imported a zone addon from the free addon section, which includes all the regions within Russia, Poland and all the countries where special characters are used.

Currently in the database I have "Адыгея" as a Russian region, but for Romania I have "Bucure?ti" - I've been playing with character sets within MySQL and now have Russian appearing correct, but when I attempt to search for a Russian region with the Shipping Estimator, all it shows is "???????". I understand this is an encoding problem, and likely a decoding issue with the script.

Now whilst it's just as easy to find an addon that uses standard characters, how do I get around this issue? I read that the character set CP1251 would work for Russian, Polish etc but again the Shipping Estimator wouldn't decode this.

Any suggestions or possibly a solution?

Thanks for your help!

Jason