Index: wflow-py/wflow/create_grid.py
===================================================================
diff -u -r1738c121cfc83b76d915b8ed55747cb1bb9a2f64 -r1ddc355747b9398b2d02f00e0ab985e8e644a06e
--- wflow-py/wflow/create_grid.py	(.../create_grid.py)	(revision 1738c121cfc83b76d915b8ed55747cb1bb9a2f64)
+++ wflow-py/wflow/create_grid.py	(.../create_grid.py)	(revision 1ddc355747b9398b2d02f00e0ab985e8e644a06e)
@@ -221,16 +221,14 @@
     ElementTree.SubElement(root, 'yCellSize').text = str(cellsize)
     xml_file = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(destination, 'grid.xml'))
     logger.info('Writing Delft-FEWS grid definition to {:s}'.format(xml_file))
-    gridxml = open(xml_file, 'w+')
-    gridxml.write(ElementTree.tostring(root))
-    gridxml.close()
+    with open(xml_file, 'w+') as f:
+        f.write(ElementTree.tostring(root, encoding='unicode'))
 
     # create shape file
     Driver = ogr.GetDriverByName("ESRI Shapefile")
     shp_file = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(destination, 'mask.shp'))
     logger.info('Writing shape of clone to {:s}'.format(shp_file))
-    # for encode see https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/53939
-    shp_att = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(shp_file))[0].encode('utf-8')
+    shp_att = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(shp_file))[0]
     shp = Driver.CreateDataSource(shp_file)
     lyr = shp.CreateLayer(shp_att, srs, geom_type=ogr.wkbPolygon)
     fieldDef = ogr.FieldDefn('ID', ogr.OFTString)