Vim (which is what is allowed vion most systems) easily supports extended character sets. You may need to specify the Vim whose encoding is used.
This is controlled by two parameters:
:set encoding
:set fileencoding
If you uploaded the wrong file, you can use it :set encoding=<new encoding>to force encoding. This changes the interpretation of characters on the fly. If you want to save the file in a different encoding while maintaining the current interpretation of the characters, use set fileencoding=<new encoding>Vim to save the file in this encoding.
utf-8 .vimrc.