use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use MIME::QuotedPrint;

binmode STDOUT, ":encoding(UTF-8)";

my $str = "a\x{201E}z";
#my $str = "a„z";
#my $str = "a\x{201C}z";
#my $str = "a\x{03C9}z";
#my $str = "aäz"; #works

print $str, "\n";

my $str_q = encode_qp($str);

print $str_q, "\n";