Strange encoding problem (ISO-8859-2 and UTF-8)

[Pajak Leon]

Hello.

I have strange problem with encoding in my database, which has been already on three different mysql servers with various encodings.

At the beginning database was ISO-8859-2 (latin2). After migrations to new server
The columns are in UTF-8 (columns are: charset utf8, collate utf_general_ci).
But to display correctly national chars on site (utf-8 in php) i need to execute following commands in php after creating connection to database:
mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET 'latin2'", $db);
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'latin2'", $db);

When i execute those commands, national string are correctly displayed on site. I've lived with this for one year, but now i need to connect to database in Java and there those commands don't work. I need to repair it.

Questions:
1. What is the encoding of text in my database UTF-8 or latin2(ISO-8859-2) ?
2. How to repair my database to have normal UTF-8 data without any tricls with setting CHARACETER SET and NAMES to latin2?