Set the following environment variable G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all. This will allow you to see messages you print with debug in Vala.
If you try and set_text on a Gtk.Label a string which might contain markup characters (<>&), you need to escape them first, using GLib.Markup.escape_text.
Instead of using standard string constructing method path_string1 + path_string2 you can use GLib.Path.build_filename method in order to construct a valid path to a file, for example: GLib.Path.build_filename (GLib.Environment.get_home_dir (), "folder1", "folder2").