*Umlauts/UTF-8 Problem

Hello,

I am having a problem with umlauts in utf-8 encoded txt file, which is 
being read by my script. Instead of umlauts I get ? or squares or 
anything else, but not those umlauts. What is the problem, can anybody 
help, please?

Thanks.

ps. I've chosen utf-8, because I have to have Western European _and_ 
Cyrillic characters on the same page. utf-8 seems to be the only 
encoding to let me do that.