Consider this code:

namespace Name {
    public string val() {
        return "val";
    }
}

void main() {
    string name_val = Name.val();
    print(name_val);
}

The generated C code in main winds up looking like this:

	char* name_val;
	name_val = name_val ();

which the C compiler doesn't like:

test.vala: In function ‘_vala_main’:
test.vala:9: error: called object ‘name_val’ is not a function

I'm using Vala 0.8.0.