diff --git a/src/gramps.py b/src/gramps.py
index 853fbe983..37ff79645 100644
--- a/src/gramps.py
+++ b/src/gramps.py
@@ -30,6 +30,10 @@
 #
 #-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 import sys
+## hack to avoid mentioning 'utf8' encoding everywhere unicode or str is is used
+reload(sys)
+sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8')
+##
 import os
 import signal
 import gettext