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e martë korrik 27, 2004

Adieu Rina

Rina Muller is dead on sunday, at 64 years old. The DNA, Alsace's main newspaper, announces: "la mort d'une grande dame" (death of a great lady). A great lady indeed.

She was my mother's best friend, they went together to school and knew each other since 50 years.

I knew her since I was born, and considered her daughter Marie-Lorraine like a sister.
We didn't meet very often in the past few years due to our busy lives, but it was always a pleasure. She's one of the close friends who came to visit us in California when we lived there.

One fun anectdote I remember from her: during her trip in Silicon Valley, she organized an alsacian dinner in Portola Valley, in the house of Marion, a friend of Marie-Lorraine. She had succeeded in finding Munster cheese in San Francisco.
This is the most stinky cheese I know: we once had some trouble with our neighbors because we were trying to mature some fresh munster on our balcony.
I would never had guessed there was a legal way to import it in the US!

Rina was a talented business woman, CEO of Schutzenberger, the last independent brewery in Alsace. Over the years she had succeeded in gaining respect in this very male dominated environment. The Alsacian equivalent of Carly Fiorina, to use an analogy that my readership will understand.

Here's a picture I took of her in april, when she joined the whole family for a dinner in Paris.

I'm sad, my parents are very sad. I think it's the first friend of their generation to whom funerals I attend.

Good luck Marie-Lorraine!