If you use a repeat, there needs to be a parent id that ties the child repeats together. If you have two levels of repeats like you do, each level will have a parent id that is different. There is by design because we need to able to uniquely identify each parent.
You are correct that flattening multiple levels of repeats via VLOOKUP is difficult. If you publish to Google Fusion Tables, you'll get a flattening of the data that will likely be more useful. Read this to find out more.