Special character conversion in Python

# -*- coding: utf8 -*-
# above needed to show certain characters in comment
#
# unicode characters in Python 3.2
# see:
# http://docs.python.org/3.2/library/unicodedata.html
# http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.1.0/ucd/UCD.html

# a string with \u unicode characters (spanish)
mystr = '\u00bfC\u00f3mo es usted?'
# could also use ...
#mystr =  "¿Cómo es usted?"

# encode string to <class 'bytes'> or bytearray
mybytes = mystr.encode("utf8")

# decode <class 'bytes'> to string
mystr2 = mybytes.decode("utf8")

print(mystr)    # ¿Cómo es usted?
print(mybytes)  # b'\xc2\xbfC\xc3\xb3mo es usted?'
print(mystr2)   # ¿Cómo es usted?

mystr3 = "¿Cómo es usted?"
mybytes3 = mystr3.encode("utf8")

print(mybytes3)  # b'\xc2\xbfC\xc3\xb3mo es usted?'

# extra ...
import unicodedata

unicode_char = '\u00bf'
# get descriptive name
unicode_name = unicodedata.name(unicode_char)

print(unicode_char)  # ¿ 
print(unicode_name)  # INVERTED QUESTION MARK

print(unicodedata.lookup('INVERTED QUESTION MARK'))  # ¿

# convert unicode char to "utf-8" byte char
# and back to actual character
pi_u = "\u03C0"
pi_b = pi_u.encode("utf-8")
pi_c = pi_b.decode("utf-8")

eps_u = "\u03B5"
eps_b = eps_u.encode("utf-8")
eps_c = eps_b.decode("utf-8")

mu_u = "\u03BC"
mu_b = mu_u.encode("utf-8")
mu_c = mu_b.decode("utf-8")

print(pi_u, type(pi_u))  # π <class 'str'> 
print(pi_b, type(pi_b))  # b'\xcf\x80' <class 'bytes'>
print(pi_c, type(pi_c))  # π <class 'str'>

print( pi_u, eps_u, mu_u )  # π ε μ 
print( pi_b, eps_b, mu_b )  # b'\xcf\x80' b'\xce\xb5' b'\xce\xbc'
print( pi_c, eps_c, mu_c )  # π ε μ 

print( unicodedata.name(pi_u) )  # GREEK SMALL LETTER PI
print( unicodedata.name(mu_u) )  # GREEK SMALL LETTER MU