They sure have some odd voltages there!
In Austria and Germany there's been a push for several decades to get rid of any single-phase 2-wire services in favour of 3-phase 4-wire. In both countries (that share a common VDE legacy 1938-1961) direct metering is only available up to 63 A and single-phase services were usually only provided up to 35 A/230 V (as of 2015, Vienna Grids is the only operator that I'm aware of still providing the option of single-phase connections, requiring 6 mm2 meter tails and usually fused at 25 A). The current standard setup for homes and apartments in Austria is 35 A 3-phase. In Germany, some grid operators require 63 A as the only size for domestic connections, others prefer smaller services.
Larger single-phase services are frowned upon as it seems that our grid operators don't believe in load balancing over several services and require each service to be balanced (i.e. the circuits being evenly distributed across all three phases).
Back to the topic of motors: the higher the frequency the smaller motors (and transformers) can be, that's why 400 Hz is used commonly in aircrafts. Apparently the European 50 Hz just became a de-facto standard by evolution, whereas the US 60 Hz were chosen for practicability and low-flicker arc lamps.
