i'm having a database which is storing geo-data like countries, cities. i would like to use modrewrite with links like: mysite.com/europe/austria/vienna
now the problem: in german, some countries contain umlauts like austria = österreich (i can't use umlauts in urls)
so my question: is there a way to create a function inside the database which replaces all special characters when querying like "where validUrl(country)='oesterreich' ? which would replace ö->oe
my only idea so far is adding an extra database field for modrewrite which would hold "oesterreich"
any ideas? thanks