Python: reading '\xc2' from file prints fine but printing string variable with same value fails
===

    	with open(path) as f:
    		for line in f:
                print line

`path` is file with single line as `\xc2`

when I run this I get 

`\xc2`

now lets change this

	with open(path) as f:
		for line in f:
                    var = '\xc2'
                    print var

When I run this, I see  

    UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii', '\xc2d', 0, 1, 'ordinal not in range(128)'

then I try to compare the so I do

	with open(path) as f:
		for line in f:
			line = line.strip()
			line1 = '\xc2d'
			# print line1
			print line == line1

and I see `False`

What is happening here??