import unicodedata


def normalize_string(string):
    """
    Normalizes the string from unicode to ascii,
    lowercasing and stripping whitespace
    """
    def unicode_to_ascii(s):
        return ''.join(
            c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFD', s)
            if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn'
        )
    return unicode_to_ascii(string.lower().strip())